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Easyjet founder calls for cheap flights worldwide
WTTC Special Report: Easyjet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou clashed with the head of Qatar Airways, hosts of the Fourth Summit on Global Travel and Tourism, when he made a plea for cheap flights and deregulation worldwide.
“Do not invest in your flag carriers, and stop putting money into fancy VIP lounges like the one I passed through on my way here” he said in a provocative address to his audience of travel industry leaders gathered in the Gulf state of Qatar.
“I arrived in Doha after paying British Airways a horrendous amount of money,” he added.
“Open up your skies and allow anybody to fly in and out as often as they like and at whatever price they like,” he said.
The plea brought an immediate response from Akbar Al-Baker, chief executive of Qatar Airways, who was in the audience for the WTTC debate. He said budget airlines would be impractical in the Gulf region because the population was so much smaller than the 380 million people resident in Europe.
However, another contributor, an official of the budget airline Air Arabia, based in Sharjah, intervened to claim that the Middle East was no different from other regions and operating a low-fares airline was just as feasible as anywhere else.
The success of budget airlines in Europe is pushing down prices and boosting the travel industry, according to Mr Haji-Ioannou.
Speaking in a panel debate at the WTTC Summit in Doha, he warned industry leaders that the days when a travel business could plan for annual price increases were over. He said low-cost airlines have made air travel so affordable that people could fly anywhere in Europe for under £100, but hotel rates were “out of kilter” and should also come down.
He said the Internet had made everything easier and less costly for the aviation industry, and he added that a deregulated ‘open skies’ regime in Europe had further boosted the prospects of low-cost, no-frills operators.
“In Europe since 9/11 there have been sixty start-up airlines. It is not a privilege or a monopoly of easyjet or Ryanair,” he said.
Report by David Browne
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