Jet2 expands into The Midlands with a new operating base from Summer 2010.

Today (28th August 2009) Jet2.com announced the launch of a brand new base at East Midlands Airport, creating over 130,000 seats, seven new direct destinations and 250 new jobs for the region.

The airline will offer low fare destinations from East Midlands Airport to Lanzarote, Corfu, Dalaman, Heraklion, Paphos, Tenerife and Sharm El Sheikh which are available to book today for departures from May 2010, with starting fares from £59.99 one way including taxes.

It will also be possible to book package tours through Jet2holidays.com to these destinations from £269 per person for seven nights. This will extend Jet2.com’s catchment area further into Derby, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield and surrounding areas.

Ian Doubtfire, Managing Director at Jet2.com said, “At a time when many competitors are cutting services and closing bases, we are increasing ours with our ambitious expansion into the Midlands which will be our seventh base to date within the UK.”

Seven new routes and starting fares from East Midlands Airport for summer 2010 are:

• Lanzarote, Arrecife from £59.99 one way including taxes, departing 20th May 2010
• Turkey, Dalaman from £69.99 one way including taxes, departing 21st May 2010
• Corfu from £59.99 one way including taxes, departing 24th May 2010
• Greece, Heraklion from £69.99 one way including taxes, departing 25th May 2010
• Cyprus, Paphos from £69.99 one way including taxes, departing 23rd May 2010
• Tenerife from £59.99 one way including taxes, departing 21st May 2010
• Egypt, Sharm El Sheikh from £79.99 one way including taxes, departing 27th May 2010

Routes go on sale at noon today on Jet2.com

New flights from Newcastle ( NCL ) to Sharm el Sheikh ( SSH ) have been announced by Jet2.

Going on sale today the first departure will be 17th October. Sales of flights and holidays to Egypt have been selling really well this year, in part because of the strong Euro. In addition the Egyptian government supports tourism as a cornerstone of it’s growth and so there have been large investments in new hotels as well as marketing the Red Sea as a year round destination. 

This now brings the Jet2 route portfolio at it’s six Northern UK bases to: 

41 destinations from Leeds Bradford ( LBA )

20 from Manchester ( MAN )

14 from Newcastle ( NCL )

10 from Blackpool ( BLK ) 

16 from Belfast International ( BFS )

13 from Edinburgh ( EDI )

Low cost flights from Manchester to Tel Aviv

Jet2 will start a once weekly service from Manchester ( MAN ) to Tel Aviv ( TLV ), which will begin from Thursday 21 May 2009, the service.

Thomson Holidays currently operate the same service and sell flight only but they haven’t had any summer 2009 flights on sale for the route.

Jet2 is “so confident that the service will be such a popular addition to its Manchester schedule that from October the route is set to increase to twice weekly, departing Sunday’s and Thursdays.“

Jet2 launch frequent flyer scheme

More evidence that there is less and less distinction between low cost airlines and full service airlines. . . Jet2 have launched a frequent flyer scheme.

Below I have listed the key features of the MyJet2 reward scheme and given my own analysis on each.

• Customers earn 1% of everything they spend on flights back in “points”.

Not very generous considering they are not ever giving back the cash but just free flights (excluding taxes etc). I expect they will end up increasing this or offering special offers with increased points.

• Two flight zones for redemption, the lowest = 1200 points for a return flight.

Makes sense but I would have gone for three zones or just had a system where anything earned can be redeemed on any flight – this respects the work of the revenue managers who have priced each seat. If sticking with the zone system seems non-optimal business-wise to have Dusseldorf lumped in with Malaga which must have an average selling price way above Dusseldorf and I’m sure better load factor too. See the zones

• Points valid for 2 years.

Fair enough. Pretty standard, should encourage fairly swift redemption (which under the Jet2 scheme should be revenue enhancing for them as they are still charging for fuel supp, etc and there may be other passengers and ancillart revenue)

• Points pay for the base fare only.

This is crafty, it actually says in the FAQ that you will have to pay for any fuel supplements, baggage charges or other supplements on the free flight. The only consolation is you will earn points for these charges.

• No online redemption – call centre only.

This has got to change and I’m sure there are some IT geeks working on this now.

• No specific black out dates for free flights but availability is restricted

Makes sense they just have to make sure they balance off the customer satisfaction goal of members actually being able to redeem their rewards with the revenue management goal of not giving away seats that they could have got some revenue for.

For many of the flag carriers reward schemes, including e.g. flybmi who also fly from Leeds Bradford which is the main base for Jet2, there is an emphasis on “status” giving e.g. bronze, silver and gold status each giving different non-cash benefits such as access to airport lounges and priority baggage tags. MyJet2 is a cash / free flights only reward scheme so won’t perhaps encourage many business customers to choose Jet2.

New route to battlegrounds from Northern low cost carrier

Jet2 has announced a new route between Leeds Bradford Airport and Albert-Picardie Airport in northern France, with twice-weekly flights scheduled to begin in April.

Situated close to the Somme battlefield, the airport is used by visitors heading to France to experience a major location in world history and pay tribute to those killed during World War I.

“This is a really exciting destination for us and we are proud to offer the first direct scheduled flights to Albert from the UK,” commented Ian Doubtfire, Jet2 managing director. Adding :

“Battlefield breaks are becoming tremendously popular within the tourist industry and we anticipate the vast majority of passengers flying to Albert will be travelling there to see the sights and experience the history of key events during World War I.”

Should also be good news for overseas property investors in France with the launch of new flights from Jet2

Dart Group, the London listed company that owns low cost airline Jet2 has announced it’s interim results for the 6 months to 30th September 2007. Here are some of the highlights :

• Capacity increased 59%, passengers flown increased 51% to 2.6 million

• Ancillary revenue now up to £8.60 per passenger (£5.80 last year)

• Jet2holidays launched, mentions plans to sell other airlines seats in the future

• Underlying profits reduced as emphasis on growth not margin

• Winter revenues lower than previously anticipated