easyLuton
 

EASYJET SET TO QUIT LUTON AIRPORT?

If no-frills airline EasyJet is successful in its bid to buy its Stansted-based rival Go, insiders say that within a year of the deal being signed, EasyJet will try to quit its Luton Airport base and transfer the bulk of its operation to Stansted Airport in Essex and Gatwick Airport in Surrey.

An EasyJet manager who declined to be named said that the airline which has been based at Luton Airport since it was formed in 1995 has outgrown the Bedfordshire airport which despite its new terminal building, has failed to keep pace with demand and customer expectations.

“The airport management at Luton just doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that it’s competing with the likes of Gatwick and Stansted airports for the low-cost airline business and the facilities and services it offers are just not up to the standard of its competitors” the manager said recently, adding “low-cost doesn’t automatically have to mean low standards.”

Claiming that TBI, Luton’s owners seem unable to recognise that the airport is not an attractive alternative to other London airports, the manager said “It takes longer at Luton to process a planeload of our passengers than it does to process a jumbo-jet planeload at Gatwick. Luton Airport’s staff levels are ridiculously low, the place is still hopelessly inefficient and this all means that our passengers often face delays”.

It’s also claimed that improvements to the terminal buildings to provide weather protection for passengers walking to and from the planes have still not been started despite a promise from airport bosses that the work would be completed by this Summer, and that plans to change the airport access road which is often grid-locked in rush hours, are still years away from completion.

EasyJet is reported to have offered up to £400M to buy Go, the former British Airways no-frills airline subsidiary and talks are at ‘an advanced stage’.

TBI which also owns Cardiff and Belfast airports, made a £21M profit last year. Earlier this year the Luton Airport’s antiquated ground radar equipment broke down forcing the airport to reduce the number of planes landing and taking off.

What a load of bxxxsxxx.
LTN is miles better for passengers and operating crew than either LGW or STN, where it takes an age to check in, get to gate etc for pax, then a big wait in the que for take off etc.
Also better location than Crawley or Bishops Stortford.
No reason why EZY should not develop at all 3 airports.

I passed through LTN recently for the first time in ages. We disembarked and were marched to an arrival gate (saved us the walk) where we had to wait until another squad leader marched his pax out to their awaiting chariot. Luckily the weather was nice. Once inside, the terminal was obviously much improved but the fun really started when I tried to get some sort of public transport. For our comfort and convenience, the train station isn't at the aiport and because the airport is perched on a hill, never will be. For the comfort and convenience of the waiting queue, the coach to Milton Keynes train station was still unmanned ten minutes after it was supposed to leave so I gave up waiting and hired a car. Luton Airport car parks seem to be used to store stone chips.
Yes Luton has got better but it is still a shortish, hump backed twisted runway on top of a hill with a drop to a roundabout at one end and less than ideal transport links. Presumably back-tracking 26 for take off is still the order of the day.
I can see Easy's point.

It was only a 3 years ago that easyjet wanted to build its own no frills terminal at Luton that would have resembled a bus station. The council said no as it would have degraded the airport.

If I was Easyjet,I wouldnt put all my SE eggs in the BAA basket

I wonder who the manager was, who didn't want to be named. It would be almost impossible to pull everything out of LTN right now - they need all the airport capacity they can get. This looks like a way of trying to put pressure on LTN to get some improvements.

It is true that EZY did not want the huge modern check-in hall - all cosmetic and not addressing the real problem, which is after passport control.

Seems very unlikely to me, where did the report come from, as there is no mention?

Some disaffected employee/ex employee, sour grapes?

Whilst I am sure things could be better at Luton, I doubt if there will be an easyExodus from Luton.

Unless a new runway is built in the SE of England, slots at the BAA airports will dry up (They almost have already). Luton has massive capacity potential if it can keep its customers happy!

I don’t believe for a moment that an easyjet manager said “It takes longer at Luton to process a planeload of our passengers than it does to process a jumbo-jet planeload at Gatwick. If he did then he would be criticising his own company, as easyjet does their own handling now.

It is also worth noting that Luton is only 30 minutes by train from London and that 9 trains an hour call at 6 central London stations compared to Stansted’s branch line service which takes 45 minutes. Even allowing for the shuttle bus it is still quicker getting from the aircraft to Central London from Luton, as there is no train to wait for to get from the stand to the main terminal.

Who knows if the ‘planned’ move from Luton to Stansted is truth, fiction or renewed skirmishing between Easy and the airport management (and if they do move will we see the introduction of a BAA Fat Cat Tax to replace the ridiculous surcharge that they still lay at the doors of Barclays bank)?

But the unnamed source does have a point. The new bits of Luton (basically where you can spend money) show up how shoddy the old undeveloped parts of the airport (basically the places where you can’t spend money) actually are. A branch of Boots and Books Etc is nice, but the departure lounge seating area is cramped and over crowded.

Luton must have a microclimate all of its own – it always seems a few degrees colder than the rest of the south east – which makes the trudge across the tarmac and having to queue in the wet and the cold to get into the arrivals hall a less than pleasant experience. I would not like to be in the tiny baggage reclaim hall on an above average busy day.

As for the car-parking, if they are going to charge more than Gatwick or Stansted they should at least try and match the quality of their product.

Luton does have good points, as another poster said; the train connections are better than Stansted. Yes, Luton council could have done better when they run the place. But at the moment it seems to be neither one thing or the other – not quite a basic secondary airport of the sort favoured by Ryan Air, but at the same time its not the glitzy international gateway it seems to have pretensions to want to be

As a frequent recent passenger flying through Luton, these are my views:-
Rail access. Very good, but you may well get caught in huge queues of traffic en-route depending upon the time of your journey.
Road access. Depending upon time of day excellent to pathetic.
Car parks. I have only used the executive at £10 per day. Pot holled, not secure and you get drenched walking to the tinminal!
Check in. Loads of desks, might as well be underground, no natural light.
Secuity check area. Depending upon time of day the queues are either very short or huge.
Shopping area. Very good, bright and airy, plenty of choice.
Departure lounge. Depending upon time of day spacious or packed.
If it is raining you will get very wet walking to the plane unless a bus has been arranged.

The most serious problem in my view is the road access from/to the M1 and railway station. Massive queues will form during both rush hours. It has on occassions taken longer to reach the station than the lengh of my flight!

That said, nothing would deter me from flying. A little investment in the car park and access to the aircraft from the departure lounge would not go amiss and be most welcomed from a passenger perspective.

I look forward to flying easygovirginexpressdbaJet soon.

Agree with everything that Buster the Bear has said ... so come on TBI, spend a little more cash where it is needed.

Don't think there is a need for capital expenditure at Cardiff in the short term - plenty of capacity with BA Citiexpress pulling out!!

New walkways being built this summer which will be accessed from the first floor for domestic and international flights. Also a new baggage reclaim belt is being built which will be for both domestic and international flights. Access will be controlled so will have a dual role.

As for road access the council has secured government funding for a new dual carriageway approach road into the central area which will link up with the end of the A505 dual carriageway/ M1 link road.

Taken from the local free sunday paper.

Easyjet deny plans to pull out of Luton

A PILOTS' website has started rumours that no-frills airline EasyJet is to pull out of Luton Airport.

But this speculation has been categorically denied by EasyJet officials who say the low-cost airline remains committed to the airport and has no intention of moving out of the town.

The rumour started to snowball after anonymous messages were posted on the PPRUNE website which is regularly used as a chatroom for professional pilots keen to swap gossip and rumours.

A 'story', which was posted on the site, also claims to have an exclusive interview with an anonymous EasyJet Manager who says the airline will outgrow Luton if it buys out rival airline, the former British Airways subsidiary Go.
But EasyJet says the 'story' is completely untrue.

A spokesman said: "This is rubbish. If we do successfully acquire Go then it may mean we can grow much quicker but that doesn't mean for one second that we will be pulling out of Luton Airport.

"Only last year we signed a 20-year commitment deal with the airport so we don't plan on going anywhere."

EasyJet is also in talks over buying out the British Airways German subsidiary DBA which has a fleet of 16 Boeing 737s and carried more than three million passengers in the last 12 months.

The Luton-based airline has already signed heads of terms with British Airways under which EasyJet will be granted an option to acquire DBA at any time up until March next year.

The company has already paid five million euros to DBA and has agreed to pay a further 39 million euros if the deal goes through.

EasyJet also announced this week, profits of £1 million before tax over the last six months.

This is the first time in the airline's history that a profit has been reported for the first half of the year which is traditionally loss-making.

I am a regular passenger flying EZY from Luton to Schiphol. I always fly on Friday evenings and back late monday night (classic long weekend times). This means that I am normally going through the airport at some of it's busiest times. Luton does have it's problems as already described but it is brilliant if you ignore the fact that it is trying to be an international gateway and just treat it in the same way you would treat a bus station. Same applys to EZY. The regular customers see the airline for what it is (i.e. a bus service to the continent) and get slightly hacked off by the moans coming from first time passengers who expect it to be the same as BA or KLM. Saying that, I think flying EZY from LTN is a lot more comfortable than flying KLM UK from STN.