Easyjet has again dismissed any prospect of providing feeder traffic to legacy carriers.
CEO Carolyn McCall told Business Traveller that although she can see why a legacy airline “would want to do it with a carrier like us… every time we’ve looked at it, it doesn’t make any sense”.
McCall was speaking at the opening of its 26th base at Amsterdam Schiphol (see news, March 31), where Easyjet is the airport’s second biggest operator.
In 2014, its passenger capacity from Schiphol was 4.3 million with 3.8 million flown, while its capacity from the UK to Schiphol was 2.75 million with 2.4 million flown. From London alone, it flies 108 times weekly (216 flights in total), and this is set to rise after the basing of aircraft at the airport and the announcement of nine new flights.
However, despite all of this, McCall said that there was little chance of a closer relationship with KLM.
She said: “For us, any kind of codesharing or interlining has never made any sense. There would need to be a very a large financial prize for Easyjet.
“I can see why a legacy carrier would want to do it with a carrier like us, but every time we’ve looked at it, it doesn’t make any financial sense. We have a clear efficient point-to-point network, we control it completely, we’re not waiting for any passengers who are delayed to put on to other flights, we’re not waiting for baggage.
“We can just run a very efficient operation and our systems don’t interlink easily, so we’d have to make some very large system changes. We’d rather focus on Easyjet systems development for us to develop ourselves. I think it’s highly unlikely to be honest with you.”
McCall even talked down the suggestion that legacy carriers might pay Easyjet for feeder traffic.
She said: “Well, they’d have to. Anything like that — a feeder from Easyjet — would rely on it being financially attractive to Easyjet, so there would have to be some financial exchange, but I don’t see that being enough for us.
“The numbers don’t really add up when we’ve looked at it.”
