April 1st - Busy week for budget airlines in southeast England
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Yesterday I was at Southend airport for the opening of a new easyJet base. Today the target is Luton airport where Jet2 has opened a new base – at the home of easyJet. Steve Heapy, chief executive of Jet2.com and Jet2 Holidays, says the customer will be the winner.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Tuesday the 1st of April, but I am not fooling around today. It's been a busy old week so far for the aviation industry in the UK, and it's still only Tuesday. On Monday, I went along to South End Airport in Southeast Essex, where EasyJet has launched |
| 0:24.7 | a base, which they say is going to give people a lot more choice, low affairs and better experience. |
| 0:32.1 | And indeed, South End Airport, if you're travelling from East London, it's a really good airport to fly through |
| 0:39.8 | very quick, getting from the train station to the plane and back again. I think I've done it in about |
| 0:46.3 | five minutes flat from my plane seat to the train platform. But then on Tuesday morning, Jet 2 moved in on Easy Jets, Homeland Territory, Luton Airport, |
| 0:59.2 | where the airline started up 30 years ago as Britain's first and now biggest budget airline. |
| 1:07.4 | Jet 2 have come along with small operation, but they say it is going to offer choice and competition |
| 1:15.0 | i've been catching up with steve he be the chief executive of jet2.com that's the airline part |
| 1:21.8 | and jet two holidays which sells packages and finding out how the first flight to Palma de |
| 1:28.9 | Majorca went this morning. |
| 1:31.2 | Very full flight. |
| 1:32.5 | Everyone was happy. |
| 1:33.9 | Yeah. |
| 1:34.4 | Great start to the proceedings, I think. |
| 1:36.5 | We've got another two flights today. |
| 1:38.5 | And we seem to be very popular, to be honest. |
| 1:41.9 | Lots of people want to travel with us. |
| 1:43.2 | They also want to travel with you from places like Stansted, very, very close actually to Luton. So what are you bringing the world by going to Luton? There's quite a divide really, Simon. I think the Stanssted catchment area we're very popular in. But once you get sort of across the, is it the M1 to the other side and to the |
| 2:02.7 | west and north of Luton, there's not a lot of people travel to the Stanssted base. And I think |
| 2:07.9 | there's a big, untapped population around Luton that doesn't travel to Stansdead. So it gives |
| 2:13.6 | the opportunity to let them people experience our product. What's different? What are you bringing to the party? |
| 2:19.5 | Customer service. That's what we build our business around providing the best customer service. |
... |
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