Ryanair, Europe's most successful low-cost airline, is going nose to nose with Europe's largest and most successful high-speed railway system.
The Irish-based airline announced yesterday that it was starting cheap flights in May from Beauvais airport, 50 miles north-west of Paris, to Marseilles. Ryanair will also try to break into the German domestic market for the first time with flights between Frankfurt and Berlin.
The French internal travel market has proved a difficult hunting ground for cut-price airlines, faced with the dominance of the national carrier, Air France, and, above all, with the success of the TGV – the high-speed rail services run by the state-owned SNCF.
