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

“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.