easyJet was founded on October 18, 1995, by Greek Cypriot businessman Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The company, which borrowed the low-fare business strategy of Southwest Airlines, started operations on November 10, 1995 using two wet-leased Boeing 737-200 and operating two routes: London Luton to Glasgow and London Luton to Edinburgh.
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easyJet was founded on October 18, 1995, by Greek Cypriot businessman Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The company, which borrowed the low-fare business strategy of Southwest Airlines, started operations on November 10, 1995 using two wet-leased Boeing 737-200 and operating two routes: London Luton to Glasgow and London Luton to Edinburgh.
The first slogans (“Making flying as affordable as a pair of jeans - £ 29 one way”) worked and so in April 1996 easyJet received its first fully-owned aircraft and commenced international flights from London Luton to Amsterdam, followed by destinations Nice and Barcelona only months later.
In March 1998 easyJet acquired a 40 % stake of Swiss charter airline TEA Basel AG. It was renamed easyJet Switzerland and moved to Geneva in April 1999.
In October 1999 the one millionth seat was sold via Internet, after only 18 months of online booking.
In 2002 the airline acquires low-cost carrier Go from British Airways, making easyJet the largest low-cost airline in Europe at that time.
easyJet continuously increased its fleet size, first by buying only Boeing 737s, before in 2003 the first A319 entered service as part of an order of 120 Airbuses.
In April 2004 a new hub was opened in Berlin-Schönefeld, increasing the easyJet network by 11 routes. By 2006 Berlin was the airline’s second largest hub. During the year 2004 many further destinations, especially in Eastern Europe were added.
In 2005 Gatwick became easyJet’s biggest hub with 16 aircraft based there and 29 destinations to be reached from there.
In 2006 easyJet was the one of the two largest low-cost carriers in Europe, serving more than 200 routes between more than 60 airports throughout Europe. The other one was Irish Ryanair, easyJet’s major rival. The orange aircraft fleet consists of more than 100 B737s and A319s with an average age of 2.4 years.
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