davidjohnson6 wrote:I am not clear how FR as an Irish airline would have traffic rights on such a set of routes.
They would likely have those rights since Ireland and Spain are both part of the EU. More specifically, they're both part of the European Common Aviation Area which allows any airline from any member country to operate out of any member country. In fact you could say that on an international level the whole ECAA is seen as one big country.
Therefor the problem wouldn't be on the Spanish side, Ryanair has the same rights there as they do in Ireland. But Brazil is not part of the open skies agreement, it's done with bilaterals and I'm not entirely sure how those bilaterals look. If it's an agreement between Brazil and the EU or the ECAA it's no problem, Ryanair would be included in the bilaterals. But it could be a bilateral agreement between Brazil and Spain in which case Ryanair would need fifth freedom rights.
On top of that I could imagine that, since this route mostly goes over sea, they would need ETOPS certifications for it. As far as I know Ryanair 737s are not ETOPS certified, after all there's no reason for that for flights within Europe.
At most I can see them fly to Cape Verde, which lies just south of the Canary Islands but that's as far as it goes. Cape Verde is easily within reach from the Canary Islands or even from mainland Europe, Transavia flies to Cape Verde from Amsterdam on a 737. As an upcoming holiday destination there's no reason Ryanair shouldn't be able to fly there. But only from Europe, they wouldn't have any rights to fly from there to Brazil.
What is a slim possibility for Ryanair is to open up a base in French Guyana which is part of France and therefor part of the EU / ECAA. From French Guyana they can cover just about all of Brazil and a good number of other South American and Caribbean destinations. But it would be a remote base, not connected to the rest of the network.
