Can easyJet make your long haul getaways easier?

I may not talk about or use them often but easyJet are one of the most popular methods for getting around Europe alongside Ryanair and Wizz. As a way to differentiate their services, the orange airline began Worldwide by easyJet in 2017 and expanded their offering last month with connecting services to Virgin Atlantic at Manchester and Edinburgh- an interesting proposition, but is it worth it?

What is Worldwide by easyJet?

Worldwide by easyJet, or as I’ll refer to it WbE, is effectively a method to combine easyJet flights across their European network with those of airlines with long haul flights from those European cities. The service utilises technology from Dohop, a travel technology company that creates ‘airline partnerships’ and form ‘seamless journeys’. In short, they claim their technology can combine tickets from easyJet with other carriers to create journeys that otherwise would not be possible - and with protection, something that separately book tickets do not offer.

Why the scepticism ?

I add the quotation markets in the above paragraph because the concept is rather vague. I am generally a fan of connecting flights having flown with Finnair, Turkish and Qatar on protected itineraries with prices being far more competitive and timings more flexible than nonstop flights. WbE doesn’t offer the same level of protection to that a traditional connecting flight does.

Example:

• Your inbound flight with Airline X is delayed, meaning that you missed your next flight due to a short minimum connection time (MCT). The airline arranges for you to go directly onto the next available flight - often with Middle Eastern airlines this could be on the same day due to high frequencies.

• Your inbound flight with easyJet is delayed, meaning that you will miss the next flight on Airline Y. As the two flights are technically issued on separate tickets, airline Y or easyJet are not responsible for automatically rescheduling you onto the next available flight. You instead have to call Dohop to rearrange.

The difficulty I have with the Dohop call centre fallback is that it complicates the process. The time spent on the phone, which is likely exacerbated by ‘covid delays’, will extend your travel stress and uncertainty as they will try to look for an alternative. However, the Terms & Conditions seem quite flexibly written stating “Dohop Service Centre may at Dohop´s sole discretion help the Customer to find a Reasonable Option”. The ‘sole discretion’ part does seem to imply that they may or may not help, but I cannot judge as I have not used the service. In Dohop’s defence, they do provide quite liberal MCTs on their bookings at 90 minutes for Schengen-Schengen connections and 2 hours 30 minutes for non-Schengen connections - although these times are significantly longer than regular connecting tickets.

The service just isn’t that convenient

And if you thought that some of that above wasn’t great, then this isn’t much better. Baggage is not checked through to your final destination - which is one of the great things about connecting flights on other airlines. Instead you will need to go to the baggage reclaim and then check in once again for your next flight - only at Gatwick can you skip the second check in by instead handing over to the ‘Gatwick Connects’ service near the conveyer belts. Still by this point you will have needed to go through immigration and then again just to have got your luggage (although less of an issue for Schengen - Schengen baggage collection).

The prices aren’t all that competitive either. Firstly here is Edinburgh to Bangkok return on a couple of random dates using WbE:

Then for comparison the cheapest fully protected connecting itinerary on the same route found in 5 seconds using Skyscanner:

Not only does the Skyscanner option give you a guaranteed connection protection and has just one stop instead of two - it also clocks in GBP 260 cheaper!

This article hasn’t even taken into account the complexities of Covid testing or vaccination requirements, due to you needing to physically step foot into the country’s territory and claim your bag. I do also question why airlines such as Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific are bothering to partner with a service like this that is not providing much value add to customer experiences and instead not working with alliance partners who probably have coverage on these easyJet routes with greater seamlessness. WbE is a smart idea but, in my opinion, poorly executed. I cannot see why anybody would, unless the price was significantly cheaper, opt to use WbE over a traditional connecting itinerary.

Have you used Worldwide by easyJet? How did you find it? Let us know in the comments - seriously, I can’t find many reviews online!