easyJet

Is easyJet safe?

Yes. easyJet has flown since November 1995 without a fatal accident or the loss of an aircraft, and it now operates about 576,000 flights a year. Its 2025 annual report records zero aviation accidents and zero safety enforcement actions by regulators. We score it 89, level with Ryanair.

The two things that hold it back: easyJet is not part of the IATA audit system, and UK investigators keep finding the same kind of mistake on its take-offs.

Which easyJet airline am I flying with?

easyJet is three airlines under one brand, set up that way after Brexit so that it could keep flying inside both the EU and the UK. Your flight number starts with U2 or EC or DS depending on the certificate, but the ticket, app and orange livery are the same.

Airline	Certificate and regulator	Aircraft registered (Sept 2025)
easyJet UK Limited	United Kingdom, Civil Aviation Authority	190
easyJet Europe Airline GmbH	Austria, Austro Control (EASA)	135
easyJet Switzerland S.A.	Switzerland, Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA)	31

easyJet Europe got its Austrian certificate in 2017 and flies most routes that start and end in the EU. easyJet Switzerland is the Swiss airline; easyJet owns 49% of it with an option on the rest. The three use one integrated safety and maintenance system approved by all three regulators, so for a passenger the differences are paperwork. All three countries hold FAA Category 1FAA IASAThe US FAA's check of whether a country's aviation regulator meets ICAO standards. Category 1 means it does; Category 2 means it does not.More in the glossary ratings.

The record: no crashes in 30 years

The Aviation Safety Network lists 14 easyJet accidents in its database, and none of them involved a death or a lost aircraft. Most are of a kind every large short-haul airline has:

• Turbulence injuries, mainly to cabin crew, in 2009, 2014, 2018 and 2024. In August 2024 two flight attendants were hurt when an A320 hit turbulence entering Italian airspace; the crew diverted to Rome.
• Ground damage, such as a tug that jack-knifed under an A320 at Manchester in 2017, and an easyJet Europe A320 that hit a KLM 737 during pushback at Amsterdam in 2019.
• A double bird strike at Murcia in March 2018. Seagulls went into both engines of an A319 on take-off, the crew stopped on the runway, and the aircraft needed repairs.

The weak spot: take-off performance

Before each take-off, the crew calculate the engine thrust and speeds for the runway length they will use. If they plan for the full runway but start from an intersection part of the way along, the aircraft has less runway than the numbers assume.

The UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch has published at least ten reports on easyJet take-offs of this kind since 2015: five in 2015 and 2016 (Belfast, Luton, Lisbon, Málaga and Lille), three in 2019 (Lisbon twice and Nice), one at Toulouse in 2023, where an A320 lined up at the wrong intersection, and one at Luton on 13 June 2025. In the Luton case, an A320 departed from an intersection with figures worked out for the full length. The crew did not notice. easyJet's own flight data monitoring flagged it the same day, and the airline changed its procedures to catch the error.

Every one of these flights got airborne safely, and easyJet is not the only airline with such events. But ten reports in ten years is a pattern, and it is the main reason incidents score 82 rather than higher.

The other recent case is a serious incident on 20 April 2025: an easyJet UK A320 lost cabin pressure in cruise over the UK and made an emergency descent. No one was hurt, and the AAIB is investigating.

How old are easyJet's planes?

Middle of the pack, and getting younger. At 30 September 2025 easyJet had 356 aircraft averaging 10.9 years: 82 A319s, 180 A320s, 75 A320neos and 19 A321neos. All are fly-by-wireFly-by-wireA flight control system in which the pilot's inputs go to computers, which then move the control surfaces. Many such systems also stop unsafe manoeuvres.More in the glossary jets from the Airbus A320 family, one of the safest airliner families in service. The A319s are the oldest and are being retired as new neos arrive and 157 more are on order for delivery from 2029.

One fleet type means one set of training, spare parts and procedures for every pilot and engineer, a real advantage for an airline whose business depends on fast turnarounds.

How to fly easyJet safely

• Keep your seat belt on whenever you are seated. Turbulence is easyJet's most common cause of injury, and it mostly hurts people who are standing or unbuckled.
• Check which airline you are flying with if it matters to you. The flight number prefix (U2, EC or DS) tells you the certificate; the safety standards are the same.
• Leave bags behind in an evacuation. easyJet's cabin-bag rules mean most passengers carry everything on board, and reaching for it costs seconds.

How we scored it

The accident record (96), with no fatal accident or lost aircraft since 1995, carries the score. Oversight (86) loses points because easyJet is not IOSA-registeredIOSAThe IATA Operational Safety Audit, an international audit of an airline's safety management and operations. Every IATA member must pass it.More in the glossary as far as we can confirm, and incidents (79) for the repeated take-off performance errors. The fleet scores 84. Compare Vueling, which is IOSA-registered but flies older jets.