Interview with Carolyn McCall, CEO of easyJet
Veröffentlicht am 24. Okt. 2014
"The success of easyJet is not a single person’s work"
Leaders League. Easyjet has achieved a revenue growth of more than 10% between 2012 and 2013. What does make your company so effective?
Carolyn McCall. Our profitability is directly linked to our business model. It works through a combination of several criteria such as a leading European network to primary airports, a young fleet (fuel efficiency), high load factor, an optimisation of each rotation time, a single manufacturer fleet (maintenance cost control). We are very disciplined about our costs and it remains a constant focus.
Thanks to its strong performance in the second half of the year easyJet led the FTSE100 risers board 3 weeks ago
Leaders League. Beyond the low-cost business model that your company has built successfully, is there any growth reserve Easyjet could use now?
C.MC. We believe we have an unrivalled network which is truly pan-European and our growth potential in Europe is still massive. In some countries the low cost carrier penetration is still low (around 30% in France vs 43% average in Europe). As a consequence Europe is a great place to expand offering us many opportunities. We recently opened a new base in Hamburg and announced in 2014 the launch of Amsterdam and Porto.
We aim to become Europe’s preferred airline. To achieve this goal the airline concentrate its efforts on maintaining and developing routes which prove popular with passengers.
Leaders League. Ryanair wants to address the business and first classes travellers market to compete with regular airlines such as Air France and Lufthansa.
How does Easyjet address these premium market segments?
C.MC. We are focused on what we are doing and, whilst being aware of the competition, are not distracted by it. We know business passengers are attracted to easyJet because of our low fares, punctuality and friendly service flying to primary airports across Europe – all of these factors help the airline to both attract and retain new business customers. The company now flies more than 12m business passengers every year and this number continues to grow thanks to our network but also the work we have done with TMCs and with our corporate customers. We have also designed our product around the business travellers offering Flexi fares to give them more flexibility. We have more than 350 corporate customers and have ensured that we work effectively with the travel trade to make it easy for business travellers to fly with us. This year easyJet, has again been voted Best Low-Cost Airline at the prestigious Business Traveller Awards for ninth consecutive years.
Our frequent flyers can also subscribe for the speedy boarding pass or the easyJet + card which enable them to have various advantages: speedy boarding, fast track at security gates, seat choice for free…
We have also grown the number of leisure customers flying with us, with things like allocated seating helping people to fly with easyJet who would not consider us before.
Leaders League. As a woman and CEO of a FTSE 100 company, what is your vision of leadership?
C.MC. EasyJet opted for a flat hierarchy and an easy-going style and we still feel like a small airline, although there are more than 50,000 people working directly or indirectly for us.
I have worked for 4 years now in an open plan office; it is part of our open culture and helps me to stay connected to everyone here.
The success of easyJet is not a single person’s work. Everyone at easyJet is aligned behind our strategy of offering our passengers low fares to great destinations with friendly service and a focus on cost control which will ensure that we can continue to deliver sustainable growth and returns for our shareholders.