Easyjet, Norwegian and Westjet to let passengers book connecting flights to America and Asia!

Easyjet, Norwegian and Westjet have announced their cooperation today. The carriers will let customers use their respective websites to book one another’s flights. The new service will allow passengers to connect from Easyjet flights to the other airlines’ long distance routes.

EasyJet, has teamed up with two other low-cost airlines to offer partner flights to US, Canada, South America and Singapore via its busiest hub, London Gatwick. Britain’s biggest budget carrier is selling domestic and European flights in conjunction with long-haul services on Norwegian Air Shuttle and WestJet. Seats on the new services are available from today. It is the first global airline connections service by European low cost carriers.

The concept instantly multiplies the number of potential journeys that can be sold in a single transaction. Norwegian is offering flights from Gatwick to New York, Los Angeles and a wide range of other US cities, as well as the Argentinian capital, Buenos Aires. WestJet, based in Canada, offers flights to Calgary, St John’s, Toronto and Vancouver.

GatwickConnects lets passengers seamlessly self-connect between different airlines at Gatwick at the touch of the button. It gives passengers more choice, provides genuine savings and takes the hassle out of self-connecting by protecting against missed connections, putting baggage on the onward flight and offering a range of other hospitality benefits, said Guy Stephenson, chief commercial officer for London Gatwick airport.

Thanks to the new platorm called ‘Worldwide by easyJet’, travellers don’t need to book each flight separately anymore to connect from one flight to another. However, they still have to pick up their baggage after the first flight and take it to the desk in the baggage reclaim area. Easyjet says it will not hold flights for connecting passengers and the new options are subject to a 2 hour 30 minute ‘Minimum Connection Time’, to allow customers time to transfer between flights and/or terminals. If a passenger miss a connecting flight they will be transferred to the next available flight.

We are confident it will be popular with customers and look forward to announcing more partners in the near future, said Peter Duffy, chief commercial officer for easyJet.

Easyjet announced it will sign other carriers up with talks already far advanced with Middle-Eastern and Far Eastern airlines amongst others. The service will expand to other key Easyjet airports such as Milan (MXP), Geneva, Amsterdam, Paris (CDG) and Barcelona (BCN). What is more, from next month Easyjet’s website will also sell stand-alone tickets on behalf of Loganair.