Ryanair might be targeting Lufthansa for its next onslaught against a flag-carried airline, but Lufthansa chairman-designate Wolfgang Mayrhuber was quite dismissive this week about the challenge coming from Mick O'Leary.

No, Lufthansa doesn't need to descend to the no-frills level like BA did to compete with the low-cost airlines, said Wolfgang. No, he doesn't believe that the low-cost carriers are a threat to Lufthansa's enormously profitable business traffic and, according to Wolfgang, Ryanair is little more than an operator of "ping-pong" flights between secondary airports.

So if Ryanair is such a minor irritant, why did Lufthansa go to so much time, trouble and legal expense to try to block Ryanair using the Frankfurt name for its Hahn base 80 miles away?

Time will tell whether the Lufthansa boss is justified in his dismissive comments but few have emerged from a head-to-head with Ryanair with less than a severely bloodied nose.