When will EasyJet stop destroying Stansted!?
It is sad that I once remember not too long ago the 13 or 14 EasyJet aircraft at Stansted with routes to Alicante, Barcelona, Faro, Fuerteventura, Madeira, Tallinn and Geneva operating all-year not to mention up to 3 daily flights to Copenhagen, 2 to Munich, 4 to Amsterdam with Glasgow and Edinburgh up to 6 flights a day and up to 3 flights in the summer to Alicante, Faro, Malaga and Palma.
Now there's a much smaller choice of routes, a base half the size of Luton when it was once nearly on par and now has really poor timings and frequencies on many of the remaining routes. For example, for Malaga I now either have to be at check-in at 4am or passport control at 1am. There was once a midday flight leaving 12:30ish, perfect! What a classic way of throwing customers away! Looking at their winter 2013/14 schedule, there better be some big expansion plans in consideration to make the Stansted netwrok half descent!
Yes they recently opened new routes to Marrakech, Sharm El Sheikh and Sofia, but these are clearly an attempt to utilise aircraft for a longer period so it looks to consumers that they are expanding and introducing more routes when in fact they are replacing effectively two or three shorter flights with one much longer one, reducing the number of a/c movements and more importantly, passengers numbers and choice for consumers. A clever way of doing business some would say, but I for one feel a sly move like this insults the intelligence of those who have some knowledge about the industry and really makes me wonder what kind of customers they are trying to attract.
The best of it is that the CEO Ms McCall categorically said that Stansted would lose 3 aircraft in summer 2012 as a result of the new base in Southend, but more efficient use of the fleet would mean capacity would not necessarily be lost at Stansted. A bare faced lie of course as only 2 years after, not only 3 but 5 or 6 aircraft have been removed! Essex overall is actually worse off than it was before!
The main problem is that I don’t think enough people are aware of the volume of EasyJet traffic that has been removed from Stansted. If a 4 a/c base at Southend really damages Stansted to the extent of close to 20 fewer departures per day in the summer of 2013 compared to summer 2011 and the loss of 5 or 6 aircraft, they really have got themselves a serious problem. Either that or the CEO intentionally lied to its customers!
Of course we can’t realistically expect EasyJet to publicise a big cut back in Stansted (although of course Ryanair does) but the fact that EasyJet don’t have the decency to even give reasons for possible Stansted cut backs and most atrociously lie by saying there won’t be any really is a disgusting way of doing business. Not telling is different from lying. I for one never appreciate a company that lies. I just hope for their sake that they don’t continue to fool their customers and risk losing their trust and their custom once and for all in a forever shrinking catchment area they have!!!