Business Traveller

FROM THE ARCHIVE

We look back at Easyjet’s early days as the carrier considers a carbon-friendly future

- WORDS JENNI REID

A look at the launch of Easyjet 25 years ago

“CUT-PRICE FLYING

US-style has arrived on the Anglo-Scottish routes,” we announced in our December 1995 issue. A new airline had launched three-times daily flights from London Luton to Edinburgh and Glasgow using two leased B737-200s, with fares between £29 and £59 one-way, substantia­lly lower than those being offered by British Airways and British Midlands from Heathrow.

A quarter of a century later, it’s difficult to imagine the UK aviation landscape without that airline’s distinctiv­e orange livery. Easyjet was founded by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a Greek-Cypriot entreprene­ur from a ship-owning family, then aged 28. As Alex McWhirter wrote, it was unlike any airline the UK had seen. It was ticketless, save for a sheet of A4 paper listing flight details, and planned to avoid costly CRS systems and ticket agents by selling direct to the public. Bookings were made by phone (the number was splashed across the side of its aircraft) and were nonrefunda­ble.

“Our target market is anyone who pays out of his or her own pocket, and this would include the small businesspe­rson,” Haji-Ioannou said.

Nothing was to be given for free on board. When we reported on Easyjet’s 20th anniversar­y in 2015, we wondered if BA and Iberia joining the European Low Fares Airline Associatio­n (now Airlines for Europe) would lead them to adopt more of an Easyjet-style service in the future. Both introduced “buy on board” on short-haul flights the following year.

Easyjet now has a fleet of 318 Airbus A320 family aircraft. The carrier flies to 18 domestic airports and 124 internatio­nal destinatio­ns from the UK, chiefly across mainland Europe but also including Morocco, Israel and Iceland. Passenger numbers for the year ending September 2019 had risen by 8.6 per cent year-on-year to 96.1 million, with a profit before tax of £427 million.

For low-cost and regional carriers, life is not always so easy. In 1995 we also reported that no-frills Air Belfast was undercutti­ng competitor fares between Stansted and Belfast Internatio­nal by up to 50 per cent. It had folded by the millennium. More recently, Iceland’s Wow Air, Denmark’s Primera Air, Cypriot carrier Cobalt Air, and the UK’s Flybmi and Monarch have collapsed.

Easyjet faces stiff competitio­n from the likes of Ryanair and Wizz Air, as well as factors outside its control – economic uncertaint­y, the impact of Brexit and oil prices. It is now future-gazing, investing in a start-up developing electric aircraft and promising to carbon-offset all of its flights. Although some members of the "Easy family", such as Easymusic, Easycruise and Easyintern­etcafé, have fallen away, it seems that in aviation, at least, the future’s orange.

 ??  ?? FAR LEFT: Easyjet’s Jane Boulton, pictured in 2000, starred in Airline, ITV’s reality show about the carrier
FAR LEFT: Easyjet’s Jane Boulton, pictured in 2000, starred in Airline, ITV’s reality show about the carrier

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