Easyjet Airlines Summary

EasyJet is originally discovered by a Greek named Sir Stelios - Loannou in 1995. Initially, they started off with two leased aircraft that only flied from Luton to Edinburgh and Glasgow. (Jones, 2007) In 1996, they replaced the leased aircraft by purchasing four second-hand aircraft. They contracted to buy 12 brand new 737s from Boeing in 1997. They successfully bought 40% of Swiss charter operation, Tea Basel AG in 1998.( Sull, Kuemmerle and Cabral,1999,20-38) In the year 2000, easyJet succeeded in listing on the London Stock Exchange. Between 2003 and 2007, easyJet opened four bases in Germany, France, Italy and Spain and took their delivery of 100th aircraft in 2005. (easyJet Annual Report, 2010) In order to compete with the other companies, easyJet needs to come out with their own characteristics which are different from other companies. The question is "What is the competitive advantage of easyJet over other companies in the Europe region?" Competitive advantage is the ability of business that is hard to be impersonated. (Mooney and New Jersey, 2007,110) Since easyJet is British 2nd largest low cost carrier airlines in Europe, their only main competitors will be Ryanair which is placed on the first. Ryanair is an Irish low-cost airline that offers slightly cheaper air tickets as they land on the secondary airport. Its headquarters is located at Dublin Airport with its primary operational bases at Dublin and London Stansted Airports. According to the report of Top European Low Cost Airlines as of June 2008, easyJet achieved a total of 41.3 million passengers while Ryanair had a total of 53.3 millions passengers which are approximately difference of 10 millions passengers. While comparing easyJet to the third largest company, Flybe, that had only 6.9 millions passengers which created a huge gap between Flybe and easyJet. Hence, Ryanair is the only company that is able to compete with easyJet. (European Low Fare Association, 2008) One of the competitive