Budget airline Easyjet have announced the introduction of allocated seating on all ski flights to the Alps after comprehensive research revealed that passengers were fed up with stressful boarding gate queues and a scramble for the best seats on the plane.
The airline had been testing the new pre-allocated seating system on certain routes this summer and now feels the time is right to push the new service out across the whole fleet. Of all passengers who responded after flights with pre-allocated seating, 70% felt the overall experience was improved. 60% went on to say they’d be more likely to use Easyjet in the future because of the new seating policy.
The new service will be available on all flights including ski routes from the 13th of November 2012. The new seat map is already on their website which we’ve found intuitive and easy to use. The charge for a standard seat is £3 per sector, a seat near the front in rows two to six is £8 and it’s £12 for the extra legroom seats.
If you don’t want to pay for a pre-allocated seat then Easyjet will randomly allocate you one free of charge. They’ve said they will do all they can to ensure passengers on the same booking are able to sit together.
Interestingly, their research after the trial showed the most requested seat was 6A for shorter flights and seat 1A for longer journeys. The least popular for shorter flights was 16B and for longer flights it was 19B. Then again does anyone really like being stuck in the middle?
I can’t think why, but passengers much preferred the A,B and C seats on the left hand side of the plane to seats D,E and F on the right.
Whilst I ‘m sure there will be passengers who see this as an attempt for Easyjet to make more money, we feel this is a positive step to allow passengers the option of securing pre-allocated seats to help take some of the stress out of the airport experience
Easyjet fly from a wide choice of UK main and regional airports to the main ski hubs including Geneva, Grenoble and Zurich
Posted by Michael Bennett on Thursday 06 Sep 2012