easyJet carried over one million passengers on its Belfast routes last year - up 87% on the previous year - making it Northern Ireland`s largest airline.

easyJet carried 1,077,246 passengers to and from Belfast between January and December 2001, up from 574,744 the year before. The Belfast operation accounted for one in seven of the airline`s passengers Europe-wide (7,664,109 passengers were carried by the airline across its network during the year to December 2001).

easyJet continued its expansion in Northern Ireland during 2001 with the launch of three new routes from Belfast International - Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The airline is increasingly becoming the choice of passengers flying on business. Currently, around sixty percent of easyJet passengers on its Belfast routes are travelling on business, a figure which is growing. Indeed, in a recent survey of Northern Ireland frequent business flyers by Ulster Marketing Surveys, seven in ten said they had flown with easyJet. In addition, those interviewed said that easyJet, above all other carriers, was now the main airline they used to travel on business to Great Britain.

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