Different people have different booking time-horizons, and the effect of this can also vary by route, time of year, day of week/direction.

I can't remember the last time a saw an easyjet oneway for less than £75 at a time horizon that I was booking.
And while BA can often still be at £175 level I can see easyjet in the £260s+.

(I also can't remember the last time I saw an easyjet price do anything other than rise, BA will move about.)

Yes, but that's half-full at Flybe's scary fares :eek:

So perhaps not too bad for the airline.

Spot on - which is why anecdotal evidence is tiresome.

For something more concrete: Easyjet's average revenue per passenger is somewhere around £46. That's from my unreliable memory, but it's easy enough to look at the airline's financials.



OK, back to the anecdotes: I need a one-way to Madrid on Wednesday, just 2 day's from now. easyJet can do it for £65 on four of its five flights from LGW, £62 from LTN. BA's cheapest offer is £120 on just one flight, from LCY: the LHR flights are £390 - £530.

But surely this is a passenger-useful feature of easyJet revenue management?

Worth looking then, in case your number gives the impression of an average £100 return.

In fact average revenue is £66, and adding back average taxes gives more like £175 return.

Agreed but all of this has ALWAYS been the case whereas the OP was stating that "easyJet tickets are hardly cheap anymore", an assertion for which there is, as far as I can see, not a shred of evidence.

I certainly would not dream of beginning to argue that Easyjet are always cheaper. This would be manifestly untrue but, again, this was always the case.

What I question is the statement that "easyJet tickets are hardly cheap anymore" and the implicit suggestion that Easyjet's prices are mostly similar to BA's (or higher). That is not my experience and I struggle to see any evidence on which such a statement could be based.

My following example did say "... at a time horizon that I was booking."

This was to emphasise that it was a personal answer - which was my point.

I think average revenue is a red herring, because it is average. If you could get a bespoke average for your own booking nature it might be. But I'd still argue it has to be a personal answer.

Actually, I CAN remember a time when easyjet, on the routes I looked at, stayed cheaper for longer - at the time horizons that I book at (not same day or next-day, but short).

"stayed cheaper" not being a comparison with BA, but with the end prices. I.e. easyjet would rise more steeply towards the end. Now they seem to rise steeply shortly after they go on sale, once again, and then plateau at expensive.

For me it was upto 2007ish when they stayed cheaper for longer.

Ah, I don't read the implicit suggestion they are necessarily more expensive (headline cost) than BAs. Just that they are not as cheap as they used to be.

I fear you are both missing the point I was making - this will always be a personal answer.

easyJet will generally have lower (original) headline fares than BA, but if you can't book at that time they are irrelevant to you.

Further more, if you don't need hold baggage you don't include it in your costs, which can switch it over to easyjet being cheaper, etc. So there is also the question of it being a like with like comparison.

But I argue easyJet are not (at my time horizons) as cheap as they used to be. They may still be cheaper than BA before bags (although often are not), but the BA premium for the service difference makes easyjet expensive for what it is.

Other time horions, other routes, etc are an irrelevance to me, and it relies upon my personal valuation of the service difference (about £10-20 for me) - hence it will be a personal answer, but whatever YOUR own personal answer it is the correct one for you.

Not really. I want the airlines to be profitable businesses, so I understand they should charge different prices at different times. easyjet do price themselves out of the market sometimes, they will sell some of these seats. I think with a slightly different model they could get more *revenue* per flight and take loads even higher. It is only a slight change to model though.

No, I believe that it was precisely the point that was being made. Well, I can't talk for IAN-UK but it was, at any rate, the point I was making: I was questioning the statement by the OP that "easyJet tickets are hardly cheap anymore". Anecdotal evidence does not enable one to draw such general conclusions: it suffices for me to show one contrary bit of evidence (which I did) to disprove the veracity of the OP's statement.

You are right that these are "personal answers" but personal answers have close to zero value for anybody else than the person: "I ate an ice-cream from a Mr Whippy's van in Aberdeen yesterday and it was awful whereas it used to be great in the past. Hasn't the quality of ice-cream in Western Europe gone down tremendously?". Well, no: it does not follow and the information that someone had an awful ice-cream from a Mr Whippy's van in Aberdeen would be of very little value to most.

While they might start just as cheap as they used to be, my experience (vs my requirements) is that they rise earlier than they used to - and then (comparatively) plateau twice.

I just don't see the implication that you seem to see. It is obviously an answer to a personal problem.


Firstly that mixes up potentially un-assessable personal subjective factors (is something horrible) with verifiable ones to a personal problem (costs vs. what you are looking to book, when).

[Further more it uses binary or ternary status (good, ok, bad) in an environment where the objective for all parties is that everything should be (tastes) good, hence it is likely that there will be few bad exceptions), compared with this problem where the question is multi-dimension and the objectives for the buyer and seller differ - as it is the price, not the assessment of the product, hence more continuous range of answers, not discrete, and perfectly acceptable for them to be at all places.]

Now you are quite correct that personal answer is indeed only relevant to the person themselves, and not others.

However that does NOT mean that an averaged out answer should be considered more correct as a general one. Anyone else similarly needs to consider it themselves. You wouldn't draw a line with a single data point.

And certainly it does not suggest that an averaged starting price answer (which is the answer to a different question), should be considered to trump the personal answer (price at time of booking) purely because it is more verifiable.

I fail to perceive the relevance of this statement. The statement you quoted from my post made no reference to BA.

If you make the statement that "easyJet tickets are hardly cheap anymore", this is a generic statement which purports to apply to all situations, not the situation of a specific individual.


OK: replace "It was awful" with "it was made of vegetable fat rather than dairy products": you get your objective factor but that changes nothing to the point I was making.

I do not understand what you mean by "averaged answer". Are you suggesting that the plural of anecdote is data and that the expression of the views of a small number of FTers here constitutes a statistically solid, reliable sample on which to base conclusions? ;) (also: I wonder whether you meant "less" rather than "more" in the second paragraph).

I consider that a ridiculous suggestion. To me the statement caries no such categorical universal pronouncement.

It is an assessment by the person who made it, that what they describe is the case in their experience, and at their time horizons, routes, etc.

It was coupled with the nature of the question. It is unlikely that either party would want people to not like the icecream product. EDITED TO ADD: So it is an entirely different nature of data analysis, limited exceptions, understand the exceptions relative to the main trend, understand the main trend. Rather than a more continuous price figure.


I'm stating that it is impossible/ridiculous to using purely current price data to suggest that the statement "easyJet tickets are hardly cheap anymore" is necessarily invalid.

Which I consider to be a statement made comparing present with previous.

I said what I meant.

plus 1

Then quell your fear - I wasn't missing your point. Honest! I was trying to ensure that less attentive readers do not take it as any more than the interesting anecdote it is. It would be unfortunate if anyone extrapolated your experience into support for any sort of argument.


Then you must be a happy man when you see the the orange aircraft: easyJet seem to be doing OK in the profit fleld. I know some feel that the airline's run by a bunch of amateurs, but I bet you anything they've had a look at alternative revenue-management models. And rejected them.

Extending the idea that British Airways might somehow be complicit in easyJet's success, how would BA stalwarts react to the low-cost carrier being contracted to operate some regional routes for the world's favourite ?

I'm not so sure.
They seem to me to be over cautious, and not sure on what their 'core' strategy is scared to touch some bits and clinging to some operating models/practices (that were not core) for longer than they should have done to develop the business, before eventually doing it, slowly.
Time taken to bring in allocated seating being one.
But other aspects of things to, small and large,now and in the past, I won't share them all openly. (To take the thread back into uncorroborated data... ;) ) But my POV is certainly not 'rejected', just not done.

These days there is not much to grapple about as BA have removed flights from regional airports and cancelled most flights from Gatwick.

Hopefully if IAG buys Vueling it can mean BA has a competitive cost base for regional flying, EZY has recently filled in voids at MAN but BHX appears underserved.

As for Flybe, they are pricey because they appear to have high labour costs compared to most regional/LCC airlines. This probably means higher fares are required, but with increasing APD and more competition from trains etc. then it is not possible. http://centreforaviation.com/analysi...ankings-104204 Hopefully once their issues are sorted out they can become part of IAG or a BA fracnhisee. I genuinley believe with Vueling and Flybe BA can essentially have a pan-european network, including regional UK.

Remember LCC's aren't necesseraly priced cheaply, but often they are due to signifcantly lower costs in the areas of labour (more productive and or less paid), I.T (no codesharing). They can also generate ancillary revenues and so on..

It is all getting rather blurry with some LCC's being hybrids of traditional LCC's and full service carriers, being either efficient full service carriers or high-class LCC's. Like Vueling, Air Berlin etc.