What to Do If You Receive an EasyJet Gift Card You Can't Use

Someone gave you an EasyJet gift card, and your heart sank a little. Maybe you live nowhere near an EasyJet route, maybe you've already got flights booked with a different carrier, or maybe you just don't fly. Whatever the reason, you're now holding a piece of plastic or a voucher code that feels like it's burning a hole in your wallet, and you're not sure whether it's rude to regift it, legal to sell it, or possible to swap it for something you'd actually use. Good news: you have more options than you think.

First, Confirm What You're Actually Holding

EasyJet sells gift cards and, separately, issues travel vouchers as refunds or compensation when a flight is disrupted. These are not the same thing, and the rules differ, so the very first step is working out which one is in your hand.

A gift card is bought by someone (usually for a set amount like £25, £50, or £100) and is generally transferable. A travel voucher from a cancelled flight is usually tied to the named passenger on the original booking and often can't be handed to a third party. If the card came wrapped in a birthday envelope, it's almost certainly a gift card. If it arrived in an email from EasyJet customer service, it's probably a voucher.

Either way, before you make any decisions, find out what's on it. Our walkthrough of how to check an EasyJet gift card balance covers the PIN-scratch and online lookup steps in detail. Knowing whether you're dealing with £30 or £300 changes what's worth your time.

Who Actually Wants an EasyJet Gift Card

EasyJet flies more than 300 routes across Europe, the UK, and North Africa, with a big concentration of service out of Gatwick, Luton, Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh, and Geneva. If you're in the US and have never set foot in Europe, this card is near-useless to you. If you're in the UK and your cousin flies to Malaga every summer, it's practically cash.

Obvious candidates

Start with the people in your life who fly EasyJet at least once a year. That includes:

• British, Irish, and European friends and family who book short-haul leisure trips
• Students or young adults doing interrailing-style travel on a budget
• Anyone with family in another European city they visit regularly
• Coworkers who've mentioned a cheap weekend break coming up

Less obvious but still real

EasyJet holiday packages include hotels as well as flights, so the card works for someone planning a package deal and not just a bare flight. It's also a genuinely useful addition to a bigger gift: pair it with a small travel-themed present and you've turned a card you didn't want into a thoughtful gift for someone else. If you're gifting an actual physical item alongside it and want the pair to feel considered rather than random, our guide to insulated tumblers and bottles worth gifting has picks that read as "I thought about your trip" rather than "I panicked at the airport."

Regifting Etiquette: How to Do It Without Wounding Anyone

The awkwardness isn't the regifting. It's the fear of getting caught. A few rules keep this clean.

Never regift to someone in the same social orbit as the original giver

If your mother-in-law gave you the card, don't hand it to her sister. If a coworker gave it in the office gift exchange, don't give it to another coworker. The pool of people who'd actually use it should be people who don't overlap with the original giver's world.

Tell the original giver if there's any chance they'll find out

You don't owe anyone a confession, but if the giver is likely to ask "did you book anything nice?" in three months, a quiet heads-up saves a much worse conversation later. Something like: "Thank you again for the EasyJet card. I'm not going to get to Europe this year, so I passed it to my sister who flies to Portugal every spring. She was thrilled." That frames it as the gift doing its job, just with a different recipient.

Don't pretend it's a new purchase

If you regift, regift honestly. Presenting a used airline card as a fresh gift you picked out is the version that actually feels deceitful. "I had this and thought of your trip" is fine. "I bought you this" is not.

Selling It: What You Can Realistically Get

Airline gift cards sell on the secondary market, but not at face value. Across the major gift-card resale platforms, airline cards typically trade at somewhere between 70 and 85 percent of their balance, with the discount reflecting the platform's fee and the buyer's risk. In practice that means:

• A £50 card might net you £35 to £42
• A £100 card might fetch £70 to £85
• A £200 card might get £140 to £170

Popular high-traffic brands do better; obscure ones do worse, and some platforms won't take airline cards at all because of fraud risk. Before you post it anywhere, check the card's terms. Some EasyJet cards explicitly state that they're non-transferable, in which case a sale is technically outside the terms even if it works in practice.

If you're weighing "sell it for 75 percent" against "regift it and get the full value in goodwill," the regift usually wins. You lose nothing, you solve a problem for someone you like, and you don't have to deal with a stranger on a marketplace.

When Nobody You Know Can Use It

Sometimes the honest answer is that no one in your circle flies EasyJet. In that case, here's the order we'd work through:

1. Check the expiry

EasyJet gift cards and vouchers generally carry a validity period, often 12 months from issue. If it's nearing expiry, don't hold it "just in case." Either use it, gift it, or sell it this month.

2. Ask the giver if they'd like it back

Yes, this feels weird. It's also less wasteful than letting £100 expire. Most gift givers would rather you say "this was so kind, but I genuinely won't use it, would you like to regift it to someone who will?" than have it sit forgotten.

3. Donate it

Some charities accept gift cards, and airline-specific ones are occasionally useful to organizations that fund travel for medical or family reasons. It's a narrower fit than a grocery card, but worth a search in your area before you write it off.

4. Use it for the smallest possible thing

If the card is small (£25 or under), the effort of selling or shipping it may outweigh the value. In that case, book the cheapest EasyJet seat you can find, use it toward a bag fee or seat selection on a flight someone else is taking, and call it done.

If You Do Decide to Fly EasyJet After All

Plenty of people who thought they'd never use an EasyJet card find a use for it within a year, especially once they realize how cheap a short-haul hop can be. If you're on the fence, the card is often the nudge that turns "someday we should go to Lisbon" into an actual booking.

Before you plan a trip around it, though, remember one thing: the card usually covers the fare, not the extras. Seat selection, checked bags, and onboard food are add-ons, and EasyJet prices those separately. A £100 card gets you two return tickets to somewhere cheap and very little else, so plan for the ancillaries in your own budget.

If your travel plans are still vague, browsing gift ideas that lean into the "I'm planning a trip" mindset is a good way to get specific. Our roundup of the best Bluetooth speaker gifts includes plenty of small, packable options that make a trip better without adding checked-bag weight, and the digital picture frame guide is a surprisingly good match if the person you'd regift to is a grandparent who'd love photos from your travels.

What Not to Do

A few things make this worse than it needs to be:

• Don't throw it away. Even a £25 card has value to someone. It's the one option that's genuinely wasteful.
• Don't let it expire in a drawer. Set a calendar reminder for two months before any expiry date printed on the card or voucher.
• Don't complain about it to the giver. Even if it was a lazy gift, the right move is a thank-you note followed by a quiet regift, not a lecture about how you don't fly budget airlines.
• Don't buy something useless to "use it up." Spending £80 on a flight you don't need to avoid "wasting" a £50 card is not a win.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I sell an EasyJet gift card?

Yes, you can sell it on secondary gift-card marketplaces, though many won't carry airline cards and those that do typically pay 70 to 85 percent of face value. Check the card's terms first, because some EasyJet cards are marked non-transferable. If you have a friend or family member who flies EasyJet, regifting is almost always the better deal.

How long do EasyJet gift cards last?

EasyJet gift cards and travel vouchers typically carry an expiry of around 12 months from the date they were issued, though the exact term can vary by card type. The expiry date is usually printed on the card or in the email that delivered it. If you can't find it, contact EasyJet customer service with the card number to confirm.

Is it rude to regift a gift card?

Only if you're careless about it. Regifting is fine as long as the new recipient doesn't overlap with the original giver's social circle, you're not pretending you bought it, and you'd tell the truth if asked. A regifted gift card that actually gets used is a better outcome than one that expires untouched.

What if the EasyJet gift card was a gift from my employer or a client?

Corporate gift cards come with their own etiquette: it's generally fine to regift or use them personally, but check whether your workplace has a policy on gifts over a certain value. If it was a client gift, some companies ask you to log or decline anything above a threshold, so it's worth a quick check with HR before you spend it.

Can I use an EasyJet gift card for baggage fees and seat selection?

EasyJet gift cards are usually applied to the flight fare at the time of booking, and in most cases they can't be used to pay for add-ons like checked bags, seat selection, or onboard food. The extras get charged to a regular payment card. Confirm the specifics on EasyJet's own gift card terms page before you assume the card covers everything.