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Ryanair is an entirely Irish company, and is one of the largest airlines in Europe.

They are also fanatical about not being late or cancelling flights. I used to work for them, and there are posters everywhere about the 18 minute turnaround times (they recently expanded this to 28 mins, when they introduced pre-booked seats as standard).

As far as I know, the Ryanair Learjet is mostly used for spare parts. It's cheaper bringing a spare part via private jet than cancelling a flight with 180 passengers. For crew transportation, the 80 stations that Ryanair has in Europe should ensure that there's a spare crew only a few driving hours away

All depends on the money. Based on what they offered the passengers, they weren't going to rent a private jet.