Airports must keep pace with evolving airline models

Innovations like the ‘Worldwide by easyJet’ model have the potential to transform the long-haul market, according to easyJet’s chief commercial and strategy officer Robert Carey.

Speaking at the 25th anniversary of GAD World in Hamburg, he said that the wider airline model would continue to evolve over the next 25 years and airports must keep pace.

Worldwide by easyJet was launched in September 2017 with Norwegian and WestJet and has since added the likes as Singapore Airlines, Scoot, La Compagnie, Loganair and Virgin Atlantic as partners.

The service offers sales partnerships and self-connect at ten European airports, including London Gatwick, Berlin Tegel, Venice Marco Polo, Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris Charles De Gaulle.

Carey said: “As an LCC, we’re all about getting customers through airports as quickly as possible using digital infrastructure.

“But the model will continue to evolve. Our Worldwide platform, for example, has the potential to transform long-haul travel.”

Carey added that there was “tremendous power” of connecting a point-to-point model with a legacy operation, and stressed that airports need to think about how they partner with carriers on that.

"Our challenge to airports is how will they partner with carriers. It has to be a partnership and we have to help each other in what we want to achieve," he said.

Looking at challenges and opportunities in the market, Carey explained that Europe remains fragmented and so consolidation would continue over the coming years.

Figures from OAG show that Europe’s top five airlines by capacity had a combined 29.8 percent share in 2017. Contrast that to the US and the top five accounted for 71.5 percent of total capacity.

“We see the US as a model where it’s likely to evolve to,” he said. “I think we've seen over the past year or so that LCCs will be a part of that. We’re going to be a force of consolidation.”

Speaking about easyJet's evolution, Carey said: “Looking back on the last 23 years since we were founded, how have we got to become the eighth largest passenger airline in the world?

"I think it’s because we’ve built a highly efficient model and focussed on what the customer wants. Ultimately they want cheap, efficient travel. Today, an easyJet short-haul flight really feels the same as a legacy airline.”