Ireland's Ryanair, the largest European low-cost airline, is considering the possibility of building its own aircraft maintenance infrastructure in Ukraine, including an aircraft engine maintenance workshop, in the long term, investment in which will amount to $500 million, Michael O'Leary, Executive Director of the airline, said.

"We are looking over the longer term as to whether we could build up our own aircraft maintenance hangars here and do heavy maintenance for aircrafts, as well as doing engine maintenance," he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

O'Leary recalled that at the first stage, within a year after the resumption of flights to Ukraine, the company would deploy 16-17 aircraft at three Ukrainian airports.

"We have plans to base aircraft, pilots, cabin crew engineers, spares in Boryspil, Lviv and in Odesa within 12 months. We could have 10 aircraft in Kyiv maybe five aircraft in Lviv and maybe one or two aircraft in Odesa. And that would double that we would grow that then over the next 2-3-4 years as the traffic builds up," the company's head said.

According to him, Ryanair is studying the possibility of building its own engine maintenance workshop in Europe, the investment in which will amount to $500 million. It can be located on the territory of Ukraine.

"We're looking at building our own engine maintenance shop, which is a $500-million investment. We certainly will put one in Europe, and I think Ukraine would be a very interesting location for something like that. Ukraine has a highly-skilled population. I think Ukraine will become a member of the European Union rather quickly," O'Leary said.