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easyJet is a low-cost airline that flies passengers and sells holidays, mostly within Europe.
easyJet is a budget airline. It sells cheap point-to-point flights across Europe and increasingly bundles them with hotels and package holidays. The pitch is simple: instead of paying for a fancy ticket with meals and baggage folded in, you buy a bare seat for a low fare and then pay extra for the things you actually want — a checked bag, a seat with more legroom, a snack, priority boarding.
That unbundled model is the whole trick. The base fare gets you on the plane; the extras are where the money quietly piles up. easyJet also earns from fees, inflight sales, and its holidays business, which packages flights with accommodation. It flies a single aircraft family, the Airbus A320, which keeps maintenance and crew training simpler and cheaper than running a mixed fleet. Headquartered near London Luton Airport, it runs a dense short-haul network from big bases like Gatwick, Manchester, and Amsterdam, aiming at both leisure travellers and business people who want a cheap, frequent hop. The airline business is brutal. Fuel, staff, and airport charges are huge fixed costs, and empty seats fly for free. So easyJet lives or dies on filling planes and keeping them moving. It competes hard with Ryanair on price and route overlap, and with Wizz Air on expanding into Eastern and Central Europe, alongside legacy carriers like British Airways on the routes where travellers want a bit more comfort. Its edge is its slot portfolio at crowded airports such as Gatwick and Amsterdam, and its scale in Western Europe.
easyJet took a severe hit during the pandemic, when travel basically stopped, and had to raise money and cut costs to survive. Since then it has leaned into holidays and ancillary sales to lift profit per passenger, and it has ordered more efficient Airbus planes to cut fuel burn. It is a cyclical, thin-margin business that can earn good money when demand is strong and stumble fast when fuel prices spike or a shock hits travel.
Saved answer · last researched 15 Nov 2026