EasyJet
- The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is easyJet.
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easyJet is a low cost airline officially known as easyJet Airline Company PLC. It is partly owned by Stelios Haji-Ioannou through his ownership of the easyGroup. The airline's headquarters are at London Luton Airport. EasyJet's IATA designator is U2 and its ICAO designator is EZY. Most of easyJet's routes are domestic UK routes or between the UK and other European airports. In 2002 easyJet purchased its low cost rival, Go Fly. It reported that the combined operations had sold 1,498,802 seats for flights as of January 2003. In the late 1990s, a Swiss easyJet subsidiary was established in Geneva in fierce competition with Swissair, but the latter went bankrupt in 2001. EasyJet's main low-cost competitors in Europe are Ryanair, Air Berlin, Germanwings, Hapag Lloyd Express and BasiqAir. EasyJet is claimed to be a more business-orientated airline than Ryanair, since it flies to major airports (as opposed to secondary airports) and has recently removed limits on hand luggage weight (within reason).
Fleet
Like most low cost carriers easyJet exclusively operated Boeing 737 aircraft. In September 2003 it decided to exclusively operate Airbus A319 aircraft. These are initially being introduced to easyJet's Geneva base and will be introduced in the UK from 2004.
Destinations
Some of easyJet's largest hub airports are London Luton Airport, Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Geneva Cointrin International Airport. London Gatwick Airport has also become a hub since British Airways reduced its number of flights from there and slots became available for easyJet. It's newest hubs are in Newcastle and Paris. In December 2003 easyJet announced it would open a new hub in Berlin, at Schönefeld Airport, from which it will start flying on 11 routes from May 2004.
As of October 26, 2004, easyJet flies to Aberdeen, Alicante, Almeria, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Basel, Belfast International, Berlin, Bilbao, Bologna, Bratislava, Bristol, Budapest, Cologne/Bonn, Copenhagen, Dortmund, Edinburgh, Faro, Geneva, Glasgow, Grenoble, Ibiza, Inverness, Krakow, Liverpool, Ljubljana, London Gatwick Airport, London Luton Airport, London Stansted, Lyon, Madrid, Malaga, Marseille, Milan, Munich, Naples, Newcastle, Nice, Nottingham East Midlands Airport, Palma, Charles de Gaulle International Airport, Orly Airport, Prague, Riga, Rome, Tallinn, Toulouse, Turin, Valencia, Venice, Warsaw and Zurich.
Booking
Initially booking was by telephone only, all the planes were painted with the booking telephone number. There is no incentive for travel agents to sell easyJet bookings because there is no commission, a standard practice for the low cost carriers. When asked about the posibility of Internet sales, Stelios had replied that the Internet was "just for geeks". Later he changed his mind, and easyJet became the first UK airline to offer online booking in April 1998. Internet bookings were priced cheaper than booking over the phone, to reflect the reduced call centre costs. The planes were repainted with the web address. Within a year 15% of bookings were made using the web site, by April 2004 the figure had jumped to 98%. Now, flights can only be booked over the Internet except during the 2 weeks immediately before the flight when telephone booking is also available.
Other facts of interest
- EasyJet is consistently a popular search query [1] (http://www.google.co.uk/press/zeitgeist.html) in the airline category on Google UK.
External links
- easyJet website (http://www.easyjet.com/)
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