With a collective fleet of over 320 aircraft, the easyJet group serves destinations
scattered across Europe, North Africa, and the Mediterranean with its orange and white aircraft.
Let’s continue our fleet deep dive video series by today looking at UK budget carrier easyJet.
The airline known as easyJet is actually three different airlines
(well, three different air operator certificates) within one airline group.
Those three airlines are: The original UK-based easyJet
Austrian headquartered easyJet Europe And easyJet Switzerland, based in Geneva
As an airline brand, things kicked-off in 1995 when Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou began
offering low-fare flights in Europe.
The idea all began more than a year before, in 1994, when Stelios went to Seattle on a business
trip and visited Boeing. It was at that time that the businessman was inspired to create a family of
brands that would all have “value-for-money” at the center of their operating models.
He would then create a start-up airline to make the brand famous.
As you already know, starting an airline is a capital-intensive endeavour, and to get his
carrier off the ground, the already-wealthy Stelios was well-supported by his father,
who was a shipping magnate. There was also investment from his brother and sister.
Apparently, the easyJet name stemmed from a brainstorming session at a bar in London,
where the founder tried to find the right words to embody his value-for-money brand.
From here, many aspects of business would begin with the word
‘easy,’ with the airline being headquartered at easyLand in Luton!
Continuing with the theme, the airline’s inflight food and drink service was called easyKiosk.
But many, many more easy brands would launch in the future…
While the easyGroup had brands ranging from easyCar, easyCoffee, easyEnergy, and much more,
the easyJet brand would probably become the highest profile of group. In many ways, this
achieved Sir Stelios’ goal of bringing attention to the business through the low cost airline.
After two years in operation easyJet was ready to expand. In 1997 it opened up its
second base in Liverpool with direct flights to Amsterdam. Shortly after,
easyJet would make its first notable airline acquisition,
initially purchasing 40% of Swiss charter operation, TEA Basel AG. This would later be
renamed "easyJet Switzerland," officially becoming the second airline in the easyJet group.
Up until the early 2000s, easyJet would be a mainly Boeing operator - having a
large fleet of 737-300s and 737-700s. However, the fleet would begin to shift
after eight years of operations as the airline announced in September 2002
its plans to buy 240 passenger jets from Airbus to meet demand and expansion.
easyJet would go on to welcome its first Airbus in October 2003.
Coincidentally, this was the same year easyCruise would be launched!
The first Airbus would be an A319, going into service in Geneva.
As easyJet continued to accept more deliveries of Airbus narrowbodies,
a significant political change in Europe would force it to create its third airline subsidiary.
Known as easyJet Europe, this newly established offshoot came about in 2017.
This was a result of the UK’s vote to leave the EU in June 2016. At the time,
this decision created a great deal of uncertainty as to what Brexit would mean for UK airlines
operating in Europe, or European airlines operating in the UK.
Thus, we would see similar moves with other European budget airlines: Irish
carrier Ryanair moved to form Ryanair UK, while Hungary-headquartered Wizz Air formed Wizz Air UK.
For UK-based easyJet, having a new airline based and registered in continental Europe would protect
the group from potential restrictions. Indeed, an Air Operator's Certificate (AOC) in another
EU member state would guarantee a continuation of services on the continent as before.
easyJet Europe would be headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and officially be established on July
18th, 2017, with the new airline's first flight taking off just two days later.
More than 100 planes have since been re-registered in Austria,
and the carrier now has its own flight numbers and callsign,
trading in the G aircraft registration prefix for the Austrian registration letters of O.E..
Meanwhile, the easyJet fleet would continue to expand as the airline
took deliveries from its first major Airbus order. Continued growth meant that, by 2019,
the airline was operating over 1,000 routes with a fleet of 333 A320 Family aircraft.
This, at the time, consisted of 39 A320neo Family and 294 A320ceo Family jets.
These aircraft served over 155 European airports in over 30 countries.
Indeed, easyJet had grown to become Europe’s largest
A320 Family operator while also becoming Europe’s largest customer for the NEO.
Today, in 2022, the easyJet group has 321 aircraft according to data from Planespotters.net. Seeing
as it had well-over 300 jets in 2019, it’s clear that a fleet shrinking has taken place. Indeed,
due to the pandemic, the airline stored or phased out many of its A319-100s in March 2020.
Some of these have gone over to United Airlines. They’re still
listed as stored - just with United instead of easyJet!
As for the group’s current aircraft, easyJet UK has 162 of these planes while easyJet Europe has
130. By far the smallest of the three, easyJet Switzerland’s fleet consists of just 29 aircraft.
Not that there’s any meaning or significance to the numbers, but it’s fun to think that
all-Boeing 737 operator Southwest Airlines will soon have seven hundred and thirty seven aircraft,
while all-A320-family operator easyJet group
recently surpassed three hundred and twenty aircraft! How fun!
When combining all three members of the easyJet group,
the airline has the following aircraft types and quantities:
92 A319-100s 173 A320-200s
41 A320neos And 15 A321neos
The A319s are by far the oldest sub-fleet, having an average age of about 14 years.
On the other end, the youngest of the easyJet subfleet are the A321neos,
which average just over two and a half years of age.
easyJet’s steady expansion would come to a stop in 2020 with the onset of the global health crisis.
In December of 2020, the airline announced that it
had reached an agreement with Airbus to defer its deliveries.
The low-cost carrier decided that it would not take any planes at all in 2021
but had also decided that 22 of the jets on order would arrive up to five years behind
the intended schedule - and at a higher price. This would see the 22 aircraft,
meant to be delivered from 2022 to 2024, arrive with the fleet from 2027 to 2028.
With travel seemingly making a bold comeback this year,
one has to wonder if easyJet regrets the multi-year deferral of these aircraft!
One interesting aspect of easyJet’s operations is its decision not to
operate flights where a train journey could be completed in three hours or less.
easyJet CCO Sophie Dekkers explained to Simple Flying in 2021:
"When we're assessing new routes, we do look at what the alternative modes of transport are. How
long would it take by train? How long would it take by road? And typically, as a rule of thumb,
we don't operate any routes that would have a train equivalent of three hours or less."
One example of this is London to Manchester. While UK flag carrier British Airways offers direct
flights on this route, the city center to city center convenience of a two-hour train journey
is hard to beat. Speaking about easyJet’s decision not to compete, Dekkers said:
"People often say to us, why don't you operate Manchester to London?
The reason is [that] the train is less than three hours. (...) Anything where the train
is shorter than three hours, people just aren't going to go through the hassle."
Interestingly, the airline has opted to form partnerships with ground
transportation in some areas rather than compete.
Indeed, it has actively cultivated a partnership with German rail operator Deutsche Bahn,
and, as we explained in 2021, the partnership works very much like an interline operation.
Connecting at Berlin Brandenburg Airport, passengers can book a single ticket for train
and plane to take them beyond Berlin and closer to their final destination.
While the short-term future of the easyJet fleet looks to be all about the Airbus A320neo
family of aircraft, the airline has already made investments in alternative propulsion systems.
Indeed, in late April of 2022, the airline announced its committment
to accelerating hydrogen combustion and hydrogen fuel-cell technology in
the form of an agreement with tier 1 aerospace supplier GKN Aerospace.
GKN, a British multinational automotive and aerospace company,
is working to develop a hydrogen combustion system that goes by the name of H2JET.
The partnership between the airline and the aerospace company will see the airline provide
insights into operational requirements and economics of commercial aircraft operations.
David Morgan, Director of Flight Operations at the airline, said,
"We know that technology is a key driver to achieve our decarbonization targets, with
hydrogen propulsion a frontrunner for short-haul airlines like easyJet. Cross-industry partnerships
are key to developing these promising new technologies and we look forward to collaborating
with GKN Aerospace to support bringing this technology to maturity as early as possible.”
easyJet is hopeful that it will be able to fly customers on planes powered by
hydrogen-combustion, hydrogen-electric, or a mix of both, by the mid to late-2030s.
easyJet has come a long, long way from its humble beginnings in 1995. First launching flights with
two Boeing 737-200s, the carrier has since decided to go ‘all-in’ with the Airbus A320 family.
While this will continue to be the case for at least the next decade,
it will be exciting to one day see the carrier adopt hydrogen as a fuel source in future decades.
Did you know about easyJet’s interesting history and that it is actually
three airlines? Let us know by leaving a comment!