easyJet to give its business passengers fast track through security

easyJet, the UK’s largest airline, is to provide free fast track security to attract more business travellers. The new service will be provided as an added benefit when buying easyJet’s flexi fares, which are available from £79 one way.

easyJet already carries more than 10 million business passengers a year who have been attracted by the airline’s low fares, industry leading punctuality and friendly service across Europe’s leading network.

All research shows that these are the key elements in attracting and retaining business passengers. The research also highlighted the other features that will help easyJet prise high yielding business travellers away from Europe’s flag carriers. These include flexible fares, which easyJet launched in 2011, allocated seating – which was introduced by easyJet across its network in 2012 – and fast track security.

Fast Track security will be included as one of the range of benefits provided with easyJet’s flexi fares which give passengers unlimited flexibility to change the date of their flights up to two hours before the scheduled departure time. Passengers booking an easyJet flexi fare will also benefit from the choice of seats at the front of the plane, speedy boarding, no booking fees and a hold bag included at no extra cost.

From May 2013 fast track security will be provided to flexi fare passengers at 27 airports amounting to 54% of the airline’s business network and over the coming months will be progressively rolled out to more airports across easyJet’s network.

Carolyn McCall, easyJet’s CEO explained how easyJet is targeting business travellers:

“Above all else business travellers want frequent, punctual flights to leading airports, with friendly service and at great fares – and that is why 10 million of them choose to fly with easyJet every year.

“Building on that platform we want to give them other services that they truly value and which we can deliver without changing our simple efficient operations. Allocated seating is a good example of something our business passengers told us they really wanted and that we have been able to manage while maintaining our industry leading punctuality. By teaming up with our airport partners we can now offer fast track security which enables time sensitive business travellers to reduce their journey time through the airport.

“easyJet doesn’t offer a business class but we do make business sense.”

The following 27 airports are part of phase one: London – Gatwick, Southend and Stansted, Liverpool, Newcastle, Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Rome Fiumicino, Milan Linate, Milan Malpensa, Venice Marco Polo, Athens, Budapest, Munich, Cologne/Bonn, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Prague, Tallinn, Geneva and Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, Paris CDG and Orly

http://corporate.easyjet.com/media/latest-news/news-year-2013/15-05-2013a-en.aspx?sc_lang=en

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At Eurostar:

For the year ended 31 December 2012 passenger numbers rose 2% from 9.7 million to 9.9 million. Whilst business travel remained flat, the uplift in passengers was underpinned by continuing resilience in the leisure travel market as the number of leisure passengers grew by 3% compared to the previous year.  ( link )

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…. over the last 12 months there was a 1% reduction in business trips abroad to 6.78 million.   This matches the 1% reduction in overall travel abroad by UK residents which fell to 56.4 million for the last 12 months – holidays fell by 2% year-on-year to 36.1 milllion.  ( link )

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There is more information about the changes in choice of airline for business travel, and the history of EasyJet attracting more business passengers  by the CAA at http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP796.pdf  (Dec 2010)

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easyJet had 10 million business passengers in 2012, up from 9 million in 2011