Anthony O. Miller
THEY were orange and angry, but peaceful, EasyJet press chief James Rothnie said yesterday of the 149 employees of the no-frills airline who protested outside the European Commission in Brussels against British Airways alleged “cheap tricks.”
They flew from London to Brussels in a special EasyJet airliner, on whose fuselage were painted the words: “Stop BA, Stop ‘Go’.” The airborne message made the jetliner “the world’s largest envelope for delivering a complaint, ” the airline said.
As the employees – clad in bright orange jump-suits – staged their Tuesday vigil, EasyJet’s Cypriot chairman Stelios Hadjioannou carried his own protest in to the Commissioners, who asked him to follow it with a formal written complaint today, Rothnie said.
At issue was BA’s ultra-low £15 fare to fly between London and Edinburgh on its own no-frills airline, ‘Go’.
EasyJet claims this fare – as it alleges of BA’s other cut-price flights – is not so much aimed at the travelling public, as at undercutting EasyJet and driving it to ground. Then, goes EasyJet’s argument, BA will simply raise all its fares.
“Bob Ayling, the chief executive of BA, launched ‘Go’ only after he failed to buy EasyJet,” Hadjioannou’s Internet web-site declares.
The complaint to be filed today is just one of EasyJet’s legal actions against its giant competitor. An EasyJet lawsuit is pending in Britain’s High Court alleging that BA wrongfully abused its dominant industry position to secretly subsidise ‘Go’ from its own deep pockets. BA has denied the charge.
This alleged “cross-subsidisation” of ‘Go’ by BA represents unfair competition with EasyJet, says Hadjioannou, who says that, by contrast, he has to go to the bank for market-rate financing, with all attendant costs and risks.
Those costs and risks were such as to have sparked British media reports earlier this month – denied by Hadjioannou – that
EasyJet was for sale, having fallen prey to its competitors’ imitation of its own cut-rate tactics.
Instead, Rothnie said Hadjioannou was open to considering outside minority investment, via the stock market, private equity or aircraft-related bonds. “But at no stage has he considered a majority sale or a total sale of the airline,” Rothnie said, adding: “The airline is not for sale.”
Meanwhile, Rothnie said EasyJet planned to begin direct Larnaca-London flights in May 1999, after taking delivery of a jetliner specifically earmarked for this route.
No Cyprus-Athens flights will be possible aboard EasyJet until EU membership pressures force the Republic to allow competition on this route to the national flag carrier, Cyprus Airways.
