Undoubedtly a push for more revenue in the short-term as overhead locker space is hardly at a premium in the current world.
At least as some kind of normal resumes, I'm not so sure this will work out quite how EZY might like to hope. The key difference from the Ryanair/Wizz policies is both still allow any customer to purchase priority boarding for the 2nd larger carry-on, irrespective of seat selection. EasyJet don't appear to be offering that to the majority, standard customers where the only option is to go "hands free" and check-in any additional bag (which of course Ryanair/Wizz still offer as well).
The main purpose of the Ryanair bag policy change in 2018 was to strike the right balance of cabin vs check-in bags as too many were going in the hold causing ground handling issues and delays. In other words, they sell priority to the capacity of the overhead bins, which I think's up to 90 pax, and everything else is checked-in at bag drop. That's also why they stopped selling priority at the gate last minute through the app. To little surprise, in normal times at least, they achieve this regularly with priority often a sell out. All in all, it works very well.
With EasyJet, they quote 42-63 seats depending on aircraft type fall into "up front" or "extra legroom" plus any flexi and easy plus cardholders that are elligable to 2 carry-on's. That would struggle to fill capacity of the overhead bins most of the time and would depend how heavily booked up front seats or flexi/plus customers there are. The result being too many customers forced to check-in additional items leading to more bags going in the hold whilst cabin space still flying partially fresh air. Suddenly they find themselves in the same situation Ryanair were in previously.
May not become an apparent issue while demand is so low, but if and when things pick-up, neither a win-win for airline or customer I fear.
Last edited by FRatSTN; 1st Dec 2020 at 17:07.