LIMITED OFFER: Get £20 back on easyJet bookings with Mastercard (Winter 2021 now on sale)

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• TimM says:

  16 Dec16 December 10:40

  Most unfortunate timing – I spent £100.97 on easyJet flights yesterday and charged them to my Amex!

  Over on the TripAdvisor forums, it has been pointed out that the costs of easyJet extras and onboard food & drink have been significantly increased recently. With the less generous new hand luggage policy (under-seat bag only unless ‘up front’, extra legroom or Plus), they seem to be heading nearer the Ryanair model of making most of their revenue from extras.

  • Lady London says:

    16 Dec16 December 11:05

    With the rise of their change fees to £49/£55 I am certain they have a sensitivity analysis spreadsheet that lets them plug in a higher change fee number, say £49, and out pops the total value of fares people paid for that they will find they won’t be able to fly, but at £49 cost to change are not worth changing so Easyjet gets to keep the money.

    So, for example, at £35 change fee 20% of originally booked flights people might not have flown, 5% of flights actually rebooked.

    At £49 change fee their spreadsheet might tell them only 0.5% of flights might be rebooked.

    Meaning Easyjet can be sure of keeping 99.5% of the money already paid to them for fares. Their many years of data will tell them just what excess seats over the number on each aircraft, on any particular route+day+time, they can sell due to sold seats that will be moved (fewer and fewer ss the fees go up) or abandoned by the purchaser.

    I have no idea what the actual %s are but the money involved is huge.

    Most money has been made on ancillary fees not base fares by legacy and new airlines for many years now.

    • callum says:

      17 Dec17 December 09:51

      If their goal is to prevent at least 99.5% from changing the date, then wouldn’t it seem far simpler just to not allow date changes?

      I’d assume that if they’re trying to find the exact price after which people will abandon flights instead of rebooking, they’d be trying to get just under that amount to maximise change fee revenue. If it was the reverse there would be no real need to know that price – they could either just make it arbitrarily high or forbid it.

  • Nick says:

    16 Dec16 December 11:08

    Indeed… and after years of marketing a ‘we’re not as bad as them’ message. It will be interesting to see in the long term whether it stays. The problem for them is that if they try to become an ‘orange Ryanair’ then everyone will expect Ryanair prices and they just can’t match that.

    In the short term it’s entirely understandable why they’ve done it, it’s a blatant money grab (and they don’t have much so are desperate for every penny). Sadly I think they need to go down that road at the moment, it’s really that or bust.

    • Lady London says:

      16 Dec16 December 11:23

      I have a lot of respect and sympathy for Easyjet but they have done one or two flaky things.

      They have been ahead of the rest of the industry in Covid, making the right decisions well ahead of others including BA (not that BA hasn’t achieved their own ends and managed quite well too).

• Cuchlainn says:

  16 Dec16 December 12:23

  At least Dick Turpin wore a mask when he ventured out. EJ will not engage with me since early July 2020, when they were overwhelmed with flight changes and minimal work from home customer service staff. They hide behind copy and paste on Twitter, don’t answer long wait calls and fob you off with their Flex policy.
  If Boris kicked the Brexit can down the road, then EJ must have a retro dustbin ! Shocking airline !

• Jerrry Butler says:

  16 Dec16 December 19:14

  Poorly conceived ruse to get more cash in , before the next inevitable late January lockdown.

• Lady London says:

  18 Dec18 December 13:01

  @Callum there are several ways of getting or keeping more revenue ftom customers. Some are in operation all the time (such as escalating not just flight prices but also baggage fees at specific points as flight date gets closer – most people don’t know that both apply).

  Disallowing things right now would probably be counterproductive when they need to keep money coming in then retain as much of it as possible (in normal times, they keep as good as 100%) then get customers to pay more alongside the initially cheap and easy booking they made.

  Then there are things they do cyclically or after analysis. There appears to be more ad hoc analysis going on now during Covid as decisions are made and adjustments (such as very recent round of price adjustment downwards on many routes). Many of the cycles were more regular and easier to spot before.

  Easyjet has been very, very smart in doing the best it can to retain the goodwill of passengers and their willingness to keep booking (ie provide new money) in extremely trying circumstances.

  Once they’ve got your money the LCC’s generally have rules that you can move flights but not refund them at all. Then most things require ancillary fees. The LCC’s are brilliant at keeping all your money and getting you to add more to what you paid one way or another.

  Covid has been a total curve ball as normally they would never ever give money back once paid.

  The weight of cancelled flights (due protective legislation) has become so great it’s actually got to the point where Easyjet seems to actually want you to take a refund now. As other options weigh heavily on them now in other ways. Not going into those here because I dont want to kick an airline publicly when it’s down in these circumstances.

  Suffice it to say I’ve also observed Easyjet take some flakier steps recently to try to eliminate liability. Usual LCC tactic of introducing restrictions out of the blue new to customers and probably legally untenable and stonewalling the customer with these.

  Sound familiar? Yup we’re seeing BA’s own way of doing that too.

  Right now I’m trying to work out what the last 2 digits of their pricing (the pence) means in terms of their price evolution for a route. I know shops use such codes in their pricing. If anyone knows plesse say, would help me work out some of their cycles for the routes I care about.

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