Europe's airlines flying high in ecommerce boom time

NEWS Europe's airlines have become the latest boom area for ecommerce - with online sales spiralling during 2002. Although airlines were hit hard in the aftermath of last year's terror attacks in the US - with falling sales mirroring a slump in public confidence - this year has seen flyers returning in their droves and buying their tickets online. However, with many of the budget airlines, such as Ryan Air and easyJet, having reached near saturation with their online sales, it is the older national airlines which are recovering market share in the ecommerce sector. Easy Group, which runs easyJet and Go, saw online sales grow by just 73 per cent this summer. This compares to growth of 170 per cent for British Airways, and a staggering 442 per cent for Lufthansa. However, Easy Group is still outperforming BA online -serving 724,721 customers during July compared to 664,434 for BA, according to research from Nielsen//Netratings. Because Easy Group's online sales model is now relatively mature it relies purely upon new customers to drive online sales growth upwards, whereas BA will be reaping the benefit of existing customers, who have previously booked in person or over the phone, experimenting with online booking for the first time.