This year marks Easyjet’s 20th anniversary. It has come a long way in two decades.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou founded the airline to offer low-cost fares to Europe. Its first flights – from its Luton base to Glasgow and Edinburgh – took off in November 1995, operated by B737s emblazoned with the carrier’s call-centre booking number.

The following year, it launched its first international service, to Amsterdam Schiphol airport. Our consumer editor, Alex McWhirter, recalls flying the route soon afterwards. Paying about £29 one-way for a flight made up of about 90 per cent business travellers, he realised there was a market change afoot.

In 1998, Easyjet started selling tickets online and repainted its planes with the web address. Some ten million tickets were sold via the internet over the next four years.

In 2002, it bought arch rival Go (previously owned by British Airways) for £374 million. The acquisition gradually turned Easyjet into a more “respectable” carrier, and it later began offering flexible tariffs (which originated at Go).

 

Today, the carrier flies more than 750 routes to over 130 airports in 33 countries, carrying more than 65 million passengers a year on its all-Airbus fleet of A319s and A320s. While Luton remains its HQ, the airline’s largest base is now Gatwick, where it operates 41 per cent of the airport’s flights.

In March, Easyjet opened its 26th base at Schiphol, where it is the airport’s second-largest carrier. The following month it took delivery of its 250th Airbus aircraft, the youngest airline to have reached that milestone and the quickest to do so.

In recent years, Easyjet has continued to court business travellers with the likes of allocated seating and Easyjet Plus membership, which offers benefits such as priority boarding and fast-track security. It is currently trialling a loyalty programme for 15,000 frequent flyers in the UK, France and Switzerland.

Now that BA and fellow IAG carrier Iberia have joined the European Low Fares Airline Association, it will be interesting to see if they adopt more of an Easyjet-style service in the future.