Cantillon: Planes or trains?

Ryanair will start flying on domestic routes in Poland from next March and Polish state-owned rail company PKP is the number-one target of the move. The low-cost airline will be charging from 99 zloty (€24) per ticket.

The omens are not good for PKP, which has seen traffic drop by 24 per cent to 274 million over the past 12 years, while domestic air-passenger numbers have increased by 87 per cent.

Ryanair is optimistic about the opportunities in Poland. Chief operating officer Michael Cawley last month drew a comparison with Spain, which has a similar population but about six times more domestic air travellers. The big difference is per-capita income, which is more than twice as much in Spain as in Poland. However, the gap is closing.

PKP is refusing to lie down, according to Bloomberg, and is spending 36 billion zloty (€8.6 billion) over seven years to shorten travel times and win passengers with its biggest infrastructure upgrade since communism ended in 1989. The company has bought high-speed Pendolino trains from Alstom, which it will start rolling out on its main routes next year.

But this will still be nine months after the Ryanair launch. The 340km (211-mile) journey from Warsaw to Gdansk on board the Pendolino will be cut in half to two hours and 40 minutes, compared with as little as two hours and 15 minutes for the 495km rail route between London and Paris. The first Pendolino will depart from a Polish station in December 2014 and ticket prices will start at 49 zloty (€11.74).

It will be quite a duel and students of Ryanair will remember the airline making a similar assault on Irish Rail in the mid-noughties by targeting the Dublin-Cork route. In the end it came to little as Irish Rail improved its service and the convenience of railway stations trumped the inconvenience of travelling through airports. That, and the fact that Ryanair staff managed to make Irish Rail staff seem courteous and friendly.