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Virgin Atlantic has teamed up with easyJet, becoming the latest partner to join easyJet’s connections service  ‘Worldwide by easyJet’

In theory, easyJet customers can now “seamlessly” connect through London Gatwick Airport between easyJet and Virgin Atlantic flights. This opens up new routing options via ‘Worldwide by easyJet’ which could see customers connecting from the likes of Barcelona through to Orlando and Edinburgh to Las Vegas.  Other Virgin Atlantic destinations now available also include Las Vegas, Antigua and St Lucia.

Virgin Atlantic CEO, Craig Kreeger, had this to say on the new arrangement,

“Virgin Atlantic is committed to working with the best possible global partners, to offer industry leading choice and connections for our customers.  easyJet’s unbeatable Gatwick network, combined with a shared customer centric ethos, makes them the ideal fit for us.   We’re delighted that customers across the UK and Europe will be able to enjoy more choice when connecting onto our flights through Gatwick and we look forward to welcoming them on board very soon.”

Note that the partnership only currently applies to easyJet and Virgin Atlantic flights that go through London Gatwick Airport.

What is ‘Worldwide by easyJet?

According to easyJet’s own explanation, it is “the first global airline connections service by a European low fares airline. Worldwide by easyJet offers self-connect and sales partnerships through a digital, virtual hub simply and efficiently… This connectivity has been enabled by technology partner Dohop whose innovative platform allows easyJet customers to book connections and forward flights on easyJet.com”.

‘Worldwide by easyJet’ launched in September 2017 enabling customers to connect easyJet flights through London Gatwick to long haul flights, with launch airline partners WestJet and Norwegian.  This quickly expanded to Thomas Cook Airlines, Corsair, La Compagnie and Loganair and the connections platform was extended to Milan Malpensa airport in December 2017. Singapore Airlines (and low cost spin-off Scoot) are set to join soon too.

Bottom line

It will be interesting to see how these new partnerships between short haul carriers and long haul carriers develop over the coming years. Ryanair launched something similar last year, though on a smaller scale, too.

On paper, I suppose they can make a lot of sense, but I wonder about how well they run in practice – you still have to collect your luggage and check it back in for your next flight, for example, which just doesn’t seem very “seamless” to me…