To provide our customers with safe, good value, point to point air services. To effect and to offer a consistent and reliable product and fares appealing to leisure and business markets on a range of European routes. To achieve this we will develop our people and establish lasting relationships with our suppliers.

company overview

easyJet is Europe’s leading low-cost airline. Since its first flight in November 1995, the airline has grown from a Luton base offering two routes from Luton to Glasgow and Edinburgh, served by two Boeing 737 aircraft, to one that offers 89 routes from 36 European airports, operating 64 aircraft (November 2002). The phenomenal growth of easyJet was boosted by its merger with of Go-fly in August 2002, making the combined company Europe’s Number 1 low cost airline.

In October 2002, the airline signed a deal to purchase 120 Airbus which will faciliate the airline’s ongoing growth strategy.

During the financial year to 30 September 2002, the company reported pre-tax profits of 71.6 million on a turnover of 552 million and carried 11.4 million passengers.

The airline’s shares were formally admitted to the London Stock Exchange on 22 November 2000 at a price of 310 pence per ordinary share.

the company

The airline was founded by Stelios Haji-Ioannou, and the family remains the major shareholder. He controls other separate easyGroup companies such as easyInternetCafe, easyCar.com, easyMoney, and easyValue. There are no “cross-shareholdings” between easyJet and these other easyGroup companies. easyJet operates independently from the other companies, although some “cross-marketing” agreements do exist.

The airline is based at easyLand, a bright orange building adjacent to the main taxiway at Luton Airport. In an industry where corporate HQs are generally considered to be the ultimate status symbol, it is the very embodiment of the easyJet low-cost ethos.

easyJet has won many awards and tributes voted for by consumers. The airline was named Winner of Best Value category in the first ever Visa e-tail awards which was voted for by the public. easyJet also excelled in a Consumers Association survey, being the only low-cost airline to be ranked in the first division of a customer satisfaction table in a Holiday Which? survey. It was also named Best European Low Cost Airline in the Skytrax passenger survey 2002 – the largest independent survey of its kind in the world.

easyJet flies one of the world’s youngest fleets of Boeing 737-300, the average age of the aircraft being under 5 years old. Between October 2000 and the end of 2004, 32 new next-generation 737-700s are being delivered into easyJet. In October 2002, easyJet announced its intention to appoint Airbus as its preferred aircraft supplier, subject to shareholder approval. As part of this deal, easyJet will place a firm order for 120 Airbus A319 aircraft for delivery from September 2003 over five years, with ‘price protection’ on a further 120 Airbus A319 aircraft until 2012.

our merger with Go

On Thursday 1 August 2002, easyJet and Go completed the merger deal to create Europe’s number one low-cost airline. The airlines are now working towards operating and acting as single airline under the easyJet brand.

The 374 million transaction makes easyJet Europe’s number one low-cost airline. In June 2002, the combined airline carried some 14 million people – bigger than all but a few of the Europe’s largest national airlines. It is this scale that is important. Europe is a land of opportunity for low-cost airlines, and the new easyJet will be in a position to bring low-cost flights to more people on more routes more quickly. Consumers will benefit from this merger – it is the traditional airlines that better watch out!

easyJet and Go are committed to taking the best practices of both airlines in creating the new airline and, over time, there will be significant changes to the way in which the combined company operates and interacts with customers. For example, there will be a common point of sale through one call centre and one web site – easyJet.com.

There will also be significant network developments through the integration of existing Go routes – e.g. Rome, Milan, Munich, Copenhagen and Prague, which will provide a wealth of opportunities to start routes from easyJet bases at London (Luton or Gatwick), Liverpool, Geneva, Amsterdam and Paris.

easyJet keeps costs low by eliminating the unnecessary costs and ‘frills’ which characterise ‘traditional’ airlines. This is done in a number of ways:

– Use of the Internet to reduce distribution costs easyJet was one of the first airlines to embrace the opportunity of the Internet when it sold its first seat online in April 1998. Now approximately 90% of all seats are sold over the Internet, making easyJet one of Europe’s biggest Internet retailers.

– Maximise the utilisation of the substantial assets Each Boeing new 737 aircraft has a list price in the region of $35 million. Therefore maximising utilisation of each aircraft reduces the unit cost.

– Ticketless travel Passengers instead receive an email containing their travel details and confirmation number when they book online. This helps to reduce significantly the cost of issuing, distributing, processing and reconciling millions of tickets each year.

– No free lunch Eliminating free catering on-board reduces cost and unnecessary beauracracy and management. It is also an important differentiator between easyJet and other airlines and a potent reflection of our low-cost approach. Passengers can purchase food on-board and, ironically, we have won awards for our catering service!

– Efficient use of airports easyJet flies to main destination airports throughout Europe, but gains efficiencies through rapid turnaorund times, and progressive landing charges agreements with the airports. By reducing turnarounds to 30 minutes and below, easyJet can achieve extra rotations on the high-frequency routes, thereby maximising utilisation rates of its aircraft.

– Paperless operations Since its launch easyJet has simplified its working practices by embracing the concept of the paperless office. The management and administration of the company is undertaken entirely on IT systems which can be accessed through secure servers from anywhere in the world enabling huge flexibility in the running of the airline.

the operation

easyJet currently has operating bases throughout the UK and mainland Europe. It is a truly European operation and was one of the few airlines to take advantage of the reforms offered by the single European aviation market.

easyJet, combined with Go, employs 2,870 people, currently has 45 Boeing 737-300 aircraft and 19 Boeing Next Generation 737-700s, with an additional 24 Boeing 737-300 aircraft in the Go fleet (October 2002).

the culture

easyJet favours an informal company culture with a very flat management structure, which eliminates unnecessary and wasteful layers of management. All office-based employees are encouraged to dress casually. Ties are banned – except for pilots! Remote working and ‘hot-desking’ have been characteristics of easyJet since the beginning.

the low-cost European market

The overall air transport market in Europe is expected to grow substantially in the coming years. The International Air Transport Association estimates that the number of international scheduled passengers travelling between countries in Europe will grow from 176 million in 1999 to 215 million in 2003, reflecting an average annual growth rate of 5.1%.

By contrast, the low-fare segment of the market is expected to grow at a significantly higher rate. A report published in January 2000 by Cranfield University in the UK estimated that low-cost airlines currently carry 4% of all domestic and international passengers within Europe, a figure expected to increase to 12-15% by 2010.

easyJet operates a very simple fare structure. All fares are quoted one way to allow customers the flexibility to choose where and when they would like to fly, without any restrictions applied to qualify for the cheapest fares (unlike most traditional airlines who will only offer cheap flights if the customer stays a Saturday night, therefore a cheap fare will not be available for a day-return business or shopping trip). The way we structure our fares is based on supply and demand. So, generally speaking, the earlier you book the cheaper the fare will be. Sometimes, however, due to market forces our fares may be reduced further.

Our booking system reviews bookings every day for all future flights and tries to predict how popular each flight is likely to be. If the percentage of seats sold is higher than normal then the price would go up. That way we avoid the undesirable situation of selling out popular flights months in advance. That gives you the flexibility to decide last minute and still get a better deal than if you flew with other airlines at the same time for the same journey.

easyJet is committed to offering the lowest fare amongst all our competitors for any given flight.

the Internet

The Internet plays a vital part in the easyJet business plan, and is critical to its ongoing success. As a low-cost operation, controlling the cost of doing business is crucial to the airline’s ability to offer low fares. Because the Internet provides the most cost-effective distribution channel, easyJet has aggressively pursued its strategy of encouraging passengers to book their seats online.

Here are some examples of the ways in which easyJet incentivises people to book via the Internet:

– Passengers booking online receive a discount of 2.50 for each leg of a journey. easyJet first pioneered the concept of offering a discount to Internet customers, an initiative that has been widely copied by competitors.

– Any easyJet promotions are exclusive to the Internet, so that customers must get online if they wish to take advantage of discounted fares.

– If customers wish to book seats more than a month in advance of the departure date of the flight, they can only do so by booking online. As fares generally increase as the departure dates gets closer, this means that the best fares are first available to those who book via the Internet.

Since easyJet started selling seats via the Internet in April 1998, the airline has enjoyed dramatic growth in its online sales. The airline reached the one million seat mark in October 1999, and celebrated this important landmark by giving that lucky passenger unlimited free flights for a whole year. Five months later in March 2000, easyJet reached two million seats, and it only took another three months after that to reach the three million seat mark, indicating a huge acceleration in the growth of online sales. easyJet has now sold many millions of seats online.

The proportion of all sales made online has also shown impressive growth. easyJet now sells around 90% of its seats online every week which is a higher percentage than any other airline, reinforcing its position as the “web’s favourite airline”.

In March 2002, easyJet was awarded the prestigious “Best Online Retailer” accolade at the annual Revolution New Media Awards.

Rafael Aragones Estella, Regional Manager for Southern Europe 

Rafael (39) joined Go, the low-cost airline, three years ago when he launched the Spanish and Portuguese markets.  During this time he built the company ‘from scratch’, adapting the UK business model for the local markets and transforming it into a highly profitable business of 12 Million Euros turnover per year, thus creating the largest airline between the UK and Spain with over 2,3 Million passengers.

Rafael was recently promoted to Regional Manager for Southern Europe including the Czech Republic and intends to use his widespread marketing experience within the low-cost airline sector and the consumer goods area to drive the sales of easyJet in Czech Republic along a similar route, making it the ‘favourite airline to the UK’. Rafael is a national of Spain.

Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Founder

Stelios (35) founded easyJet in 1995. In 1998, he established the ‘easy’ group of companies, with the objective of exploiting the ‘’easy’’ brand for ventures other than easyJet. Such ventures include easylnternetCafe, a chain of internet cafes, easyCar, a budget car rental business, easyValue, an internet price comparison service, easyMoney, a personal finance service and easy.com, an internet portal and e-mail service. Stelios intends to retire as Chairman and as a director of easyJet plc at the 2003 annual general meeting. Stelios is a national of the UK and Cyprus.

Sir Colin Chandler, Non-executive Chairman

Colin (62) joined easyJet in April 2002 and is also currently Chairman of Vickers Defence Systems, a subsidiary of Rolls-Royce Plc and Deputy Chairman of Smiths Group Plc. In his earlier career, he held various posts at British Aerospace Plc and its predecessor companies and undertook a four-and-a-half secondment to the Ministry of Defence. He is a UK national and was knighted in June 1988 for services to export.

Ray Webster, Chief Executive

Ray (56) joined easyJet in March 1996 as Managing Director and in 2000 Ray was appointed Chief Executive as the airline prepared for its flotation on the London Stock Exchange in November 2000.

Prior to joining easyJet, Ray had 27 years of experience in the airline industry at Air New Zealand. His last role at Air New Zealand was as General Manager of Strategic Planning, where he was responsible for the identification, evaluation and implementation of corporate development options, including the concept development and planning of a start up ‘’value based’’ (low-cost) airline serving short-haul routes within the Australasian market. Ray is a New Zealand national.

EASY JET PRESS PACK

easyJet will continue to deliver the principles that passengers wanted, expected and enjoyed with Go – safety, low cost fares, high frequency of flights as well as flexibility and choice.

The ‘new’ easyJet offers passengers much more:

– 88 routes from 11 European countries, flying from Prague to 3 different airports in the UK (London Stansted, East Midlands and Bristol).

– For this winter easyJet has increased frequency to all destinations to become the largest airline between Czech Republic and the UK and the first low-cost carrier to Central Europe.

– As a result of the immense popularity of the route, there are now up to 5 flights per day from the Czech Republic to the UK.

– easyJet flies from Prague direct into London Stansted, Bristol, East Midlands (and soon to Newcastle) airports thus providing access and increasing opportunities to and from the north of England, west and southeast of the country.

– easyJet (or rather ‘Go-the low cost airline’ as it was called at the time) launched its Prague – London route in September 1999 and in the six weeks that followed, an amazing 10,000 seats were booked on this soon-to-be-popular route.

– Prague is the most popular and one of the most profitable routes in the easyJet network.

– In the early years, the lack of a Czech website, low internet penetration and the restriction of online purchases by the major credit card companies in Czech Republic restricted easyJet’s activities to those of the English-speaking expat community in Prague. As these constraints in Czech e-commerce no longer exist to the same degree, easyJet is able to target Czech nationals and is doing so via press and public relations, advertising and promotions.

– As a result of the high level of interest from the Czech population, a Czech language section of the website will be launched in spring 2003, providing both Czech- and English-speaking passengers to take advantage of easyJet’s low fares to the UK.

– The Czech Republic has a fast-developing economy and easyJet’s low fares have provided more opportunities for small-and medium-sized businesses at both ends of the route to develop.

– easyJet is not only a site for passengers looking for low-cost holidays to the UK it also caters directly to the business passenger. For example, 35 % of all easyJet sales are as a result from business travel.

– easyJet’s fares from Prague to the UK are from 325 Kc (excluding taxes) one way.

– In Prague, flights can be booked direct on (02) 96 33 33 33 between the hours of 8am and 8pm Monday to Sunday.

– easyJet does, however, boast a very popular inflight magazine which offers useful travel tips on various destinations including Prague, information about hotels, restaurants and bars, shopping and business-related services. Passengers are encouraged to sign up for their free copy of the inflight magazine emailed direct to their computer each month.

– Data provided by the UK Civil Aviation Authority for all UK airports confirmed that easyJet is the number one carrier between the UK and Czech Republic.

– As a result of starting the Bristol and East Midlands to Prague services easyJet carried more passengers between the UK and Prague than any other airline.

– Thanks to the launch of these routes scheduled traffic between the UK and Prague has grown consistently month to month. This is great news for the Czech economy as most of this additional traffic is UK visitors traveling to Prague for, on average, 3–4 days, thus bringing even more business to the Czech Republic.

easyjet

photography

easyJet has a wide variety of photographic stock available. To keep our costs low (and to pass these savings on to our customers) we would like to ask you to visit our website www.easyjet.com and follow the trail ‘about us’ to the ‘easyJet photogallery’.. The images may be downloaded from this site and reproduced royalty-free provided full credit is given to the source and to the copyright holder, easyJet airline company limited