Is easyJet Plus worth the annual membership fee?

This is our review of easyJet Plus.  Is it worth the membership fee?

easyJet has a loyalty scheme, Flight Club, although they like to keep it low key and it is strictly ‘invite only’.  If you meet the following criteria:

• you have booked and flown on 20 easyJet flights or more in the past 12 months, or
• you have booked and flown on 10 flights or more, and spent £1,500 or other currency equivalent in the past 12 months, or
• you have booked and flown on an average 10 flights or more for 10 years, with at least one flight every year

….. then an invitation will eventually make its way to you.  For the rest of us who don’t qualify for Flight Club,  easyJet Plus is the nearest thing that easyJet has to a loyalty scheme.

easyJet Plus has been around for a few years now and clearly seems to be working, despite the £215 membership fee.  It offers a number of benefits:

Free seat selection – this is a genuine cash saving given the usual fees of up to £39.99 (yes, easyJet seating fees now reach £40 at times) per one-way flight.  This only applies to the member and NOT to other people travelling on the same booking.  It includes premium seats, ie the front and exit rows.

Free speedy boarding – although this is less important if you have a seat selected

Fast track security at selected airports

Access to ‘fast bag drop’ desks at selected airports

A free large cabin baggage item (maximum 56cm x 45cm x 25cm) – remember that easyJet usually only allows you to bring a small under-seat piece of cabin baggage onto the aircraft 

Free switch to an earlier flight home, subject to availability and only bookable from three hours before departure

10% off bistro items, plus discounts on lounges and airport parking

These benefits can all be purchased separately for one-off easyJet flights (switching to an earlier flight home is usually £49, for example) so easyJet Plus only makes sense if you are a regular traveller.

There is one extra benefit which is now exclusive to easyJet Plus customers:

Price Promise – if your flight drops in price after you’ve booked, you can request a refund of the difference.  This will be in the form of an easyJet credit voucher.  It only applies to your seat and not any family members travelling with you.

easyJet seems to be treating easyJet Plus as a cash cow.  Either that, or they are trying to minimise the number of members in order to protect the benefits offered.  The membership fee has crept up in recent years – in 2013 it was just £149, so that is almost a 50% increase in eight years.

Additional cards for partners are £185 or £135 for children.

Does easyJet Plus make sense?

Potentially, yes, especially if you are taking 5+ flights per year and are likely to pay for priority seating such as the front or exit row.

That said, you need to look at the small print.  If you pay for a front row, ‘up front’ or exit row seat on easyJet, for example, you get a free large piece of cabin baggage, priority boarding and ‘fast bag drop’ priority access included anyway.

If you didn’t value the other benefits of Plus membership, this pushes up break-even to around 10 segments per year and even that figure assumes that you would pay for a front row or exit row seat all the time.

The other snag is that the benefits only apply to you.  If you have a British Airways status card, the benefits generally apply to everyone travelling with you and not just yourself (BA lounge access is just one guest).  With easyJet Plus, whilst my own seat selection would be free I would still need to pay for other family members travelling with me.

Full details on easyJet Plus can be found on their website here.