The combination of Ryanair and Aer Lingus would have led to very high market shares on all of these 46 routes:
On 28 routes the proposed merger would have created an outright monopoly.
On 11 further routes, the only alleged competitive constraint to the merged entity would have come from charter airlines. However, this constraint would have remained weak because charter airlines have a very different business model.
Finally, on 7 routes Ryanair and Aer Lingus operate alongside other scheduled carriers. In addition to their very high market shares Ryanair and Aer Lingus are very close competitors - if not each other's closest competitors – on these routes. The reason is that the business model of competing scheduled operators tends to focus on bringing connecting passengers to their own network hubs - typical examples are British Airways (to London Heathrow), Lufthansa (to Frankfurt) and Air France (to Paris Charles de Gaulle) – as opposed to the point-to-point connections that Ryanair and Aer Lingus offer.
