There's a general tendency to think of budget airlines as small, eating crumbs off the table when the Big Guys are done eating. And while it once was that way, in recent years Ryanair, the classic discounter, has become Europe's biggest airline in passengers carried, fleet size, and number of European cities served.
Because it is able to operate under the EU's agreement that treats all European airlines as domestic, it's been able to develop out from its early reputation as a cheap way to get to sunnier beaches and become a dominant domestic carrier in several European countries, and it has ambitions for more.
In Italy, UK and Spain, its share of the market is in double digits (20, 19 and 18); it outranks Alitalia in Italy and Iberia in Spain. Besides those three, it's the top carrier in Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Bulgaria, and #2 in Portugal, Belgium, Hungary, Czechia and Latvia, and #3 in UK, France, Denmark, Germany, Greece and Montenegro.
And while it hasn't been able to dominate in Austria and Switzerland, where Lufthansa controls the flag carriers, it's definitely making moves, including taking control of Austria's Niki airline in a surprise move last month.
On a world scale, Ryanair ranks #5 in passengers carried; only the U.S. Big Three and Ryanair's model, Southwest, were ahead of it. It's #9 in passenger miles flown, with only Lufthansa and BA ahead of it among European airlines (and both of them have many routes that are much longer). In fleet size, only the four U.S. carriers and two Chinese carriers beat its fleet of 413 737s. Southwest, at 697 and #4, is also an all 737 airline.
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