It is the second year in a row that the Luton-based no-frills carrier has claimed the title of the UK’s largest airline, according to statistics from the Civil Aviation Authority.
More than 28m passengers flew with easyJet through UK airports, 52,000 more than with bitter rival Ryanair.
After extracting transfer passengers from British Airways, the numbers flying with the British flag-carrier were 26.3m, while bmi and Flybe both carried under 7m each.
easyJet attributed its success to ‘offering the lowest fares to the most convenient airports’, which has seen it grow from a fleet of just two aircraft when it launched 15 years ago.
Now it operates from 16 UK airports and is making ‘significant headway’ in Europe.
easyJet is the leading airline at Milan Malpensa and is the second largest airline in France and Switzerland.
In 2010, easyJet anticipates it will grow by 10% to carry more than 50m passengers across Europe, and currently offers 500+ routes across 29 countries with a fleet of nearly 200 aircraft.
Airline 2009 passengers at UK airports
easyJet 28,147,268
Ryanair 28,095,201
BA 26,274,056
Bmi 6,887,386
Flybe 6,749,650
*BA numbers adjusted to reflect passenger journeys made by transfer passengers.
Aviation news from e-tid.com:
UK airports see worst decline since WWII (16/03/2010)
IATA slashes loss forecast (12/03/2010)
European airline traffic Feb10 (10/03/2010)
Encouraging signs for UK airports (10/03/2010)
And easyJet news:
easyJet chief executive to join Whitbread (03/03/2010)
ASA raps easyJet over ‘misleading’ ad (03/03/2010)
Hitwise shows travel is the best performer (03/03/2010)
easyJet posts higher-than-expected revenue (21/01/2010)