“Brutal” decisions will need to be taken in an industry shake-out as airlines grapple with soaring oil prices.
The warning was made by easyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall, quoted on the inaugural flight to Amman in Jordan – at five hours the budget carrier’s longest duration route.
McCall said it was inevitable that airlines, including her own, would examine route networks as profit margins narrow.
“You will see us being much more brutal about which routes work and which routes don’t,” she said, citing a recent decision to pull out of Helsinki.
“We’re going to be very, very tough about routes that aren’t working.”
But the carrier is aiming to attract more business travellers by offering premium tickets on its website that allow passengers to switch between flights within a four-week window, check in luggage for free and board aircraft early.
About 18% of easyJet’s 50 million passengers a year are business travellers and McCall has earmarked the corporate market as a priority for growth. The airline’s corporate sales team will number 15 staff, based in the UK, France and Switzerland, responsible for negotiating with the travel departments of both FTSE 100 and smaller corporates.
“Nearly one in five of our passengers are business travellers and we’ve done that without doing anything to attract them – they’ve found us,” McCall told The Guardian. But she ruled out introducing business-class on board aircraft, saying: “We don’t believe in that. It’s complicated and it’s not egalitarian. We’re a very egalitarian airline.”