First, an aside...

Despite the rest of this page being slightly out of date (see box above), I felt I had to say a little more here about the founder of easyJet.

Yes, our favourite cheeky Greek Stelios has done it again. He's not happy with just giving us budget air travel, he want to sell us other things too. Like...

• Internet access, from a series of internet cafes dabbed easyEverything. There's a number of them in London (the first was opened in June 1999) and more are opening throughout major cities in the UK and other parts of Europe. Characteristics include large numbers of modern LCD-screen PCs lined up in banks. Coffee is available too, and the cafes are open 24 hours a day with cheaper rates over night. Comprehensive radio campaigns promote awareness - our Stelios never seems to skimp on advertising and seems to be an expert in obtaining no-cost publicity with PR stunts and activities - there are parallels here with another successful entrepreneur, Richard Branson who founded Virgin.
• Car rental - in typical style, Stelios is taking an old concept and adding his own bit of Greek spice. He's buying thousands of Mercedes A-class cars (the short and stout looking ones) and renting them out at budget prices. Just like with the airline, the earlier you book the better price you get. There's another twist too - Stelios is plastering the Mercedes with logos to help with yet more publicity. Another difference is that the business is largely internet-based, this is a cost saving move - less offices to run. Again the venture, called easyRentacar, is backed by a vast publicity campaign. Probably vital remembering that the car rental business is a mature one, with several very well known players (Avis and Hertz, for two) and presumably small margins. Stelios once again seems to be playing the "pile them high, sell them cheap" game. I'll be interested to see the success of easyRentacar. With easyJet, he turned the industry on its head. easyRentacar is not so different to the other car rental companies, so the company's impact on the market may be less.
• Banking. Yes. He's certainly diverse! Whilst not running yet, Stelios obviously has designs in this area, otherwise he would not have the domain easyBank linked from his other sites which include the easyGroup, which is a holding company.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou was born in Athens in 1967. He studied economics BSc and shipping, trade and finance MSc in London before moving back to Athens and gaining experience in his father's shipping company. With this behind him, he founded his first venture Stelmar Tankers in 1992 which is still running well.

So what's next for Stelios? easyShoes - An internet-only shoe store? easyHouse - an on-line estate agent? Who knows. It seems even Stelios doesn't either - on one of his sites he's asking for ideas. That sort of openness is great to see from such a successful business man.

What you see is what you get with Stelios - and good luck to him! Follow Stelios' progress for yourself at his web site, stelios.com.

Paul Baker, 1 May 2000

Paul runs ClockTowerWeb Ltd and can be emailed.

Update....10 September 2000:

Looks like some of the above is coming true, since Stelios is instruting his laywers to contact some companies with "easy" prefixing another word. The laywers are claiming the other companies are profiteering from the well known brand. See this news page.

Stelios would not like me mentioning the similarities between him and Richard Branson above - in this article he describes Branson as "some hippy from the sixties."

easyMoney appearing later in the year, according to the above article. We shall see.

Update....21 March 2001:

Listen2us is a web site logging feedback from web users on various aspects of the easyJet service. It seems that many visitors are not pleased with the airline's performance.

OK, now back to easyJet...

Where do they fly to?

• Aberdeen, Scotland
• Amsterdam, Holland
• Barcelona, Spain
• Edinburgh, Scotland
• Glasgow, Scotland
• Inverness, Scotland
• Nice, France
• Palma de Mallorca
• Athens, Greece
• Geneva, Switzerland
• Madrid, Spain
• Belfast
• and more

all from/to London Luton Airport.

And also...

• Liverpool to Amsterdam
• Liverpool to Nice
• Amsterdam to Nice

Other destinations they are looking at include Alicante, Faro, Jersey, Malaga, Oslo and Zurich.

Booking your seats

This is dead easy. Just ring 0990 29 29 29 (from overseas: +44 990 29 29 29) 24 hours a day and you'll get through to a representative who will help you. You can pay by credit card. You are given a reference number which in theory is all you need to quote when you check in, however it is best to take your lovely-shade-of-orange booking confirmation letter which will be posted to you. You are not sent tickets. This, I assume, is all part of the cost cutting.

easyJet are ATOL registered.

By the way, the phone number, heavily featuring the number 29, comes from the fare to Scotland; GBP 29. According to their in-flight magazine they noticed they had become famous for it!

easyJet seem to like collecting sales phone numbers. Apart from the one above all these have been featured in adverts and on the side of the planes (some of these may not work now):

• 01582 445 555
• 01582 445 566
• 01582 700 004
• 01582 700 008
• 01582 700 009
• 0870 600 0000
• 0870 2420242

I have no idea why they keep changing phone number. Perhaps they use different numbers for different types of advertising so by logging the incoming calls they can easily asses which form of advertising generates the most calls.

Pricing

Probably easyJet's most notable feature! By cutting costs, easyJet can offer some very low fares, provided you book well in advance. Seats for all flights are charged in a band. The prices go up as they sell the seats, so book as early as possible for the lowest prices.

When easyJet came in with their aggressive pricing, they were by far the cheapest. However, as with most markets, the competitors soon started to drop their prices. Now there is not such a difference between easyJet and, say, British Midland, who also offer good value.

Luton Airport

...is a bit of a dump I'm afraid. They still haven't shaken off the Lorraine Chase look. The terminal building is uninspiring and the car park I was in had a loose stone surface, making it nearly impossible to manoeuvre your luggage trolley to and from your car. Hmmmmm....... Having said that, the car park was at least near the terminal building - no 15 minute bus journeys from long term car parks like at Heathrow for example.

Thanks to Alex McAiney who said a few words in favour of Luton Airport, which I will quote here... "The terminal building itself is functional - all it needs to be really. It's clean and shiny, has a bar, restaurant, duty free. And its main benefit is that whilst growing it's not too big. Gatwick, Manchester etc. with kids can be a nightmare. Luton's like being at home almost."

Checking in

easyJet flights have prefixes EZY and EZS. Just give the check-in desk clerk your booking confirmation number. Checking in with easyJet is no different to any other airline, with one notable exception. You don't get allocated a seat number. This is probably easyJet's worst "feature". At Luton you get a numbered boarding card; the earlier you book in the lower your number. At Nice you don't get anything. It's a case of every man for himself when boarding - very unsatisfactory, in my humble opinion.

The theory for not giving boarding cards is time saving. easyJet reckon they can get people on their planes quicker when people don't have allocated seats. This is because people will be anxious to sit together and so will make sure they are at the gate, ready to board as soon as possible. Lone travellers, who don't have anyone to sit next to and hence have no incentive to get on early, are a minority.

That's the theory anyway. You may also notice that easyJet use enclosed gates (you hand your boarding card in at the gate, not at the door of the plane) where possible and use two sets of stairs, front and rear. Again, these are time saving measures.

Boarding

Well, if you're at Luton (and possibly some other airports) you get called to the gate by your boarding pass number (1 to 30, then 31 to 60 etc.), so the earlier you booked in the better the seat choice you have when you get on board. If you're at Nice (and possibly some other airports) you get called to the gate and you stand there in line (and you stand there, and you stand there, if you were on my particular flight) until you get on a bus to be taken to the plane. Yes, a bus. This isn't British Airways Club Class at Heathrow you know; no all weather moving-floor corridors to lead you to the plane in comfort. If you're at an airport where they don't give you a numbered card, get your riot gear on. :-)

The flight

Contrary to popular belief easyJet do have real metal planes (737-300's) with pilots who look and sound like the real thing, so you don't have to steer it yourself. However there are no stewards or stewardesses. Instead they have crew members who dress in a smart and very practical orange T-shirt, complete with easyJet phone number and logo of course, and black jeans. They look good and are very relaxed and efficient. I think that as they are dressed in sensible clothes for running up and down the aisles serving drinks, they behave more naturally than their counterparts on the other airlines dressed up as though they're off to a wedding. They charge reasonable prices for the drinks and give away the in-flight magazine, easy Come easy Go. As it says on the cover, the magazine is "easyJet's only freebie, get it while you can!" As if taking the mickey out of itself, the magazine (June/July 1996 issue) introduces you to Stelios, easyJet's chairman. Towards the back his mug shot is shown with a scribbled-on pair of glasses, moustache and beard.....as if you need more proof that this is no ordinary airline.

No food, but why do you need it? Luton to Nice is about 1 hour 50 minutes, Luton to Scotland and Amsterdam much less. Hardly enough time to finish reading your paper, never mind start feeling hungry. Think about it - you only expect food on a flight because it's normally always there!

Conclusion

What can one say? It's great. It's cheap. There's no frills. There's no fuss. I'd fully recommend them and would not hesitate to use them again. We're now saving up for a long weekend in Amsterdam. Now, if only they would issue seat numbers.....

You climb down the steps onto the concourse and turn round to look at the plane that's just flown you for nearly two hours for less than 50 quid and you think "how on earth do they do it?!"

Expansion

easyJet currently has six planes. I suspect easyJet's first planes were second hand (or should that be "previously enjoyed") because new planes tend to be out of the price range of fledgling businesses. However, in October 1997 they ordered 12 "brand new" (as the web site has it) 737's. If nothing else, this suggests they are making money!

In the summer of 1998 easyJet announced the planned purchase of another 15 planes, this time the new Boeing 737-700 series. This would take the easyJet fleet to 38 by 2003.

The word "expansion" springs to mind when you take a look at easyJet's press releases! They have been adding routes and planes aggressively.

The easyJet web site

The official easyJet web site was due to be launched on 10 October 1997 at 18:00 but it was not actually launched until the end of October. The front page said "Coming soon to a screen near you" in typical easyJet humour. The source code of the front page had an embedded timer (in Java, if that means anything to you) which displayed the time remaining until the launch of the site at the bottom of browsers. However, it never reached zero and the timer was reset when it got close to the launch time to give another week. That week passed and it was some time until the site was up and running. Strange that they didn't plan the web launch to coincide with the anniversary of their launch party on 18 October.

I guessed that the delay was due to extended testing of an on-line credit card booking system (like the British Midland one). However, initially the site did not have a credit card booking facility so either I was wrong, or it was not working well enough to put on the live site.

So, to the web site itself. It is well laid out in frames, quite pretty, lots of small "one screen size" pages instead of larger ones. There is a non-Java version available. Everything that you would expect is there. There are full timetables for all routes and price ranges are given. There is background information about the company and even a diagram showing the dimensions of their 737s!

In 1998 easyJet launched on-line ticket ordering. This section of the web site is well presented and clear, but can be a little slow to respond. (The British Airways on-line ticket ordering can be even worse).

The site is more conventional than I was expecting. The way they run their airline business is anything but conventional so I was expecting something a little out of the ordinary on the web site, but no, the site is a very sensible one. Maybe this will change as it evolves.

Have a look at the easyJet web site yourself.

Competitors

I must also mention easyJet's struggle with competitor Go, launched on 22 May 1998. easyJet are not happy that Go have been allowed to set up with the financial backing of the enormous airline British Airways behind it - they feel it is unfair and anti-competitive. You used to be able to read all about the legal wrangling from a prominent link at the easyJet home page, including copies of faxes sent and received.

Go fly from London Stansted. There's a minimum 2 night stay for the standard (cheap) fares which are return only. Go allocate seats at check-in. They use 737-300's like easyJet. Go "is a wholly-owned subsidiary of British Airways run as a separate company" according to their web site.

Another competitor is Buzz, launched in January 2000 and based at Stansted. They are owned by Dutch giant KLM and fly to European destinations. Buzz offer web-based sales just like easyJet, though the fare system is more complex, involving returns and minimum stays.

easyJet advertising

I think easyJet need to be a bit more careful about their advertising and promotions...they have had several complaints to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) upheld. You can read about them all from this ASA index of companies beginning with E, amusingly entitled "all_bad_e"...

The boring stuff

This web page is not an official easyJet document and is not endorsed by them. It is a fun web page, designed to be helpful. The author cannot be held responsible for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions (though he will gladly correct mistakes as soon as possible if you email him).

This web page is a product of ClockTowerWeb Ltd - sort of. You see, this page was born on 28 September 1996, over three years before ClockTowerWeb Ltd was even a twinkle in its founder's eye. But the page now resides on the ClockTowerWeb server, so that's why we said it. Anyway, this is far too much information and frankly we're amazed you're still reading.

The ClockTowerWeb Ltd copyright page applies. Additionally, please read the note at the top of the page.

Last uploaded 23/12/04