There aren’t many airlines without a premium cabin that deserve a birthday toast, but easyJet marking 30 years is one of them. The airline that once sold £29 seats from Luton to Glasgow on a cold November morning in 1995 went on to change the way Britain – and Europe – travels.
At the time, its founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou was a 28-year-old shipping heir with a hunch that people would happily trade fancy meals for cheaper fares. He launched easyJet with one Boeing 737-200 – leased from GB Airways – and just under 80 staff. Reservations were scribbled on paper and tea onboard cost £1. Luton, their chosen base, was considered an odd pick – it was the cheapest London airport, and that was exactly the point.
Within weeks, flights were packed. Passengers didn’t care that the boarding cards were reusable or that the check-in crew wore denim instead of blazers. They liked that it was simple. The bright orange livery stood out against a sea of sober liveries and corporate nonsense, while rivals scrambled to respond. Ryanair, until then a modest UK-Ireland shuttle, copied the idea and launched domestic routes just 16 days later.
By the late nineties, easyJet had gone online, slashed booking costs, and set a new expectation for what flying could be. Suddenly, £50 weekend escapes to Amsterdam, Geneva, or Barcelona were no longer fantasy. The ITV series Airline gave viewers a behind-the-scenes glimpse of check-in chaos, missed flights, and a surprisingly human crew who kept it all moving in 20-minute turnarounds. For a while, it felt like everyone in Britain had plans to fly on easyJet.
Of course, easyJet has grown up since those scrappy early years. It now runs more than 350 Airbus A32x aircraft to over 1,200 routes, and employs nearly 19,000 people. It’s the UK’s largest airline by passenger numbers and one of Europe’s few low-cost carriers with a reputation for actually running on time. Its expansion has brought inevitable criticism, and a FTSE listing. Sadly, seats as cheap as £29 are all but a nostalgic memory.
But it’s hard to deny the cultural shift easyJet created. Before it came along, flying was something you dressed up for. Today, it’s something you do on a whim, for the price of dinner and drinks. While you won’t catch us there, Luton’s once-sleepy terminal became a symbol of affordable jet travel, and millions of ordinary travellers were visiting evermore obscure parts of Europe. For us, London Gatwick is a far nicer easyJet departure point.
We still prefer a leather recliner seat and a proper meal when the route allows, but when it comes to short hops where convenience and reliability matter more than rosé, easyJet is often the smart choice. The cabins are clean, the aircraft modern, and the crews brisk but human. They’ve earned our respect the hard way – through consistency, not champagne.
So, happy 30 years of flying, easyJet. You may never serve caviar, but you’ve proved that “no business class” doesn’t mean “no class at all.”
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