WORLDWIDE BY EASYJET

Most of us have bought a “franken-ticket” at least once. Whether it was backpacking around Europe in our youth or trying to find an affordable couples getaway to Southeast Asia, it involves trawling through different websites and carefully stitching together tickets with two (or more) airlines.

The savings can be immense when working on a budget, but there are also significant drawbacks. Your sectors aren’t connected, so you have to check in, go through security, and claim your bag twice (or more), and if a flight is delayed or canceled, you’re all out of luck.

Enter easyJet, the low-cost European carrier that caters to this budget-minded market and recognizes the need for an alternative to traditional airlines' often costly and complex interline and codeshare agreements.

In 2017, it launched ‘Worldwide by easyJet,’ a booking platform that makes it easy to book connecting long-haul flights on easyJet and its partner airlines. But how does the service work, and how well is it going? Let’s take a closer look.

Creating a service for self-connecting travelers

‘Worldwide by easyJet’ came about after the airline stumbled upon an untapped opportunity. Its analysis showed that over 200,000 passengers a year were already self-connecting between two easyJet flights at London Gatwick (LGW) using the Gatwick Connects service. It started to investigate further, initially seeing if there was a way to streamline the connection process. Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet, explains:

Gatwick is our largest base, and we wanted to provide a more efficient experience to our passengers and keep them loyal to easyJet. But we quickly realized we were looking at the tip of an iceberg. We realized that more than 70 million passengers flying through an easyJet airport each year are connecting to other flights, mainly long-haul. Worldwide by easyJet is designed to open up this market segment for us.

So, in late 2015, easyJet set about building a service that improved connectivity between easyJet flights and between easyJet and partner airlines. Executing the vision would take over a year.

Overcoming the inherent technical challenges

The biggest challenge that easyJet faced was establishing the technology platform to enable its vision. easyJet is a ticketless carrier with a proprietary reservation system for point-to-point flights and has no solution to display and sell connections across the easyJet network or to a partner carrier. So it partnered with Dohop, a technology company specializing in connecting travel providers.

Dohop provides the middleware that integrates the online engines of easyJet and its partners, connecting the overlapping points in their networks to provide a single booking experience for the customer.

Each airline still owns the customer relationship, with the transaction happening in its direct channel and issuing its respective confirmation to the customer. Dohop just provides the technology ‘glue,’ as well as the vital Protect Connection serviced, as Peter Duffy, Chief Commercial Officer for easyJet, explains:

Because there are two airline confirmations for a single connected journey, the key missing link is the protected connection. Normally, a customer with two separate tickets experiencing an inbound flight delay could lose their onward connection and have to buy a new ticket. Dohops Protected Connection service is available 24/7 via phone, chat, and email and facilitates ticket changes or rebooks a passenger in the case of a missed connection.

Details: How the service actually works

‘Worldwide by easyJet’ was launched in 2017 with WestJet and Norwegian (now Norse Atlantic) as the initial partner airlines. A traveler wanting to get from Hamburg (HAM) to Halifax (YHZ) now had an innovative and typically far lower-cost way of doing so:

• Booking: The easyJet website lets them search for and book the full itinerary with connecting flights via LGW.
• Connecting: The service ensures a minimum of two and a half hours for connecting between the two flights.
• Ticketing: easyJet issues the ticket for HAM-LGW, and WestJet the ticket for LGW-YHZ.
• Transferring: The passenger self-connects at LGW, with simplified baggage transfer at dedicated counters,
• Protecting: The itinerary is covered by Protected Connection, which provides free flight rebookings and overnight accommodation if necessary if the connection is disrupted.

Expansion to new airports and partners

The ‘Worldwide by easyJet’ expanded rapidly, initially by easyJet pushing it to more airports across its network. Within two years, it was available at the largest easyJet airports responsible for more than half its traffic, including Milan, Berlin, Venice, Amsterdam, Paris (Charles de Gaulle and Orly), Barcelona, Geneva, and Edinburgh.

Its network of partner airlines snowballed as well, and today, the service has 17 different partners worldwide, including Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Etihad, China Airways, Icelandair, and Cathay Pacific. Many of them provide transatlantic routes, so the service now allows you to explore flights from hundreds of cities in Europe to a wide range of US destinations using the low-cost website of easyJet.

The service has also expanded to enable easyJet to sell stand-alone tickets on behalf of partner airlines such as Loganair, Corsair, Neos, and La Compagnie. Most recently, as easyJet continues to avoid competing with rail services under three hours, ‘Worldwide by easyJet’ also facilitates connections to rail services, allowing our Hamburg to Halifax traveler to add a Deutsche Bahn train ticket to their itinerary.

Taking the service for a test drive

I was curious if the service could compete with my ability to build a “franken-ticket,” so I tried a few scenarios on easyjet.com. I live in Atlanta, so I looked for an upcoming flight I’m planning to Milan. Delta can get me there quickest, in just over 11 hours via CDG, for close to $1000 one-way in economy. Looking at the easyJet alternative, I can get a ticket for a third of that price, but rather ridiculously, it will take two days to get there after being routed via Calgary and Barcelona.

Recognizing that the service might be more geared towards leisure travelers, I swapped out Atlanta for Orlando, and sure enough, I had an immediate bargain. For $150, Norse Atlantic and easyJet could fulfill the itinerary via LGW. The best a legacy competitor could do was four times that cost on a longer flight via JFK.

Sure enough, as I explored further, whether it was Las Vegas to Lanzarote ($250) or Iceland to Ibiza ($150), ‘Worldwide by easyJet’ delivered fascinating connections at attractive prices. So, while it is unlikely to compete with a legacy carrier for business travel, where a speedy connection at the sharp end of the plane is essential, it is most definitely an option worth exploring for leisure travel.

2024-09-19T13:06:40Z dg43tfdfdgfd