Ask a travel manager to name the airline that changed the economics of European business travel and
easyJet will be the first word out of most mouths. At the
2024 Travelling for Business Awards, that legacy, and its thoroughly modern execution, earned the carrier a Finalist place for Best Short Haul Airline of the Year.
easyJet's founding insight still powers the business: low fares only work for professionals if the aircraft lands somewhere useful. By concentrating on primary airports, Gatwick, Luton, Amsterdam, Geneva, Paris and dozens more, the airline gives cost-conscious companies routes that map onto real itineraries, with the frequency on core corridors to offer meaningful choice when meetings shift. Its
network breadth across Europe and North Africa is among the continent's largest, and millions of business travellers now fly it every year without a second thought.
The business toolkit has matured with them. Flexible fares protect against changing plans; allocated seating, speedy boarding and bundled extras let travellers dial the experience up or down; and the easyJet Plus subscription converts frequent flying into permanent perks, from seat selection to fast track. The airline's app, long among the industry's best, handles disruption with a self-service fluency that spares travellers the call-centre queue, while easyJet holidays quietly extends the brand into packaged trips that suit small-business travel budgets.
Judges in 2024 credited easyJet with something subtler than cheapness: predictability. Two-and-a-half decades of refinement have produced an airline whose trade-offs are transparent, whose pricing is legible, and whose operation, across one of Europe's biggest fleets, holds up under pressure.
The category crown went to Jet2.com, with British Airways and Ryanair alongside on the shortlist, but easyJet's finalist recognition confirmed its permanent seat at short-haul's top table.
There is also a fleet story quietly supporting the pitch. easyJet's continuing renewal with larger, more efficient Airbus neo-family aircraft trims fuel burn and per-seat emissions on every rotation, useful arithmetic for travel managers whose boards now ask for carbon numbers alongside cost numbers. Density without dinginess is the trick: newer cabins carry more passengers while feeling brighter, and the operational fleet's commonality keeps delays from cascading when schedules wobble.
The
Travelling for Business Awards celebrate the carriers who make business mobility work, and easyJet's 2024 showing was a reminder that the orange revolution it started is still being refined, one sensible improvement at a time.
