From todays Times
TRADEMARK registration records suggest that Britain’s biggest no-frills airline may be considering launching a transatlantic service.
Times Travel has learnt that easyGroup, the company behind easyJet, which carried more than 11 million passengers to 36 destinations in Europe this year, has quietly registered the trademark easyAtlantic — raising the possibility that it may be planning the first cheap scheduled transatlantic flights since Sir Freddie Laker launched Laker Skytrain flights from London to New York in 1977.
Laker’s operation went bust five years later after mainstream airlines, including British Airways, lowered fares to compete with his tickets, costing as little as £118. No low-cost carrier has since dared to take on the might of aviation’s big transatlantic carriers.
EasyGroup says that it has protected the brand merely as a way of preventing copycat competitors using the name, but trademark experts say such “defensive” registrations are uncommon. Ken Storey, of the Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys, the association that promotes the registration of trademarks in the UK, added that the choice of easyAtlantic signals intent. “Companies register trademarks because it is their business at stake and a brand can be worth thousands or even millions. Once you have a trademark, it leads you into brand extension.”
EasyGroup has also registered easyJet Deutsche and easyBizJet. The choice of easyJet Deutsche will be seen by many as an indication that it is taking its current option to purchase Deutsche BA seriously. EasyBizJet would seem to imply a move away from easyJet’s no-frills credentials.
When asked by Times Travel about the registrations, easyGroup’s founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou said: “In the spirit of brand extension and brand protection we do several ‘defensive’ registrations of trademarks — not all of them will result in a business.”
Aviation industry experts believe that an easyAtlantic operation is unlikely in the short term, but could be “feasible” if it involved tie-ins with no-frills carriers in the United States such as Southwest Airlines or JetBlue.
Passengers could fly to a secondary East Coast airport — which have lower airport charges and would fit the low-cost business model — and connect onwards on a cheap internal flight.
Gary Noakes, aviation correspondent for Travel Trade Gazette, a weekly travel industry newspaper, said: “It’s feasible, but the timing is not good. You can pick up cheap flights to New York for not a lot of money at the moment.”