easyJet, Europe's leading airline, has celebrated the 20th anniversary of its base at Bristol Airport - its largest outside of London.

In 20 years of operations, easyJet has grown to be the largest airline at Bristol having flown over 72 million passengers since operations started there.

With 17 based aircraft and over 650 crew members, easyJet provides Bristol passengers with 70 domestic and international routes, including the most popular destination - Geneva.

easyJet's very first flights from Bristol - to Faro, Palma and Nice - began in August 2003 and since then the airline has gone from strength to strength.

This year easyJet has launched four new routes to Chania in Crete, Belfast City, Rovaniemi in Lapland and Enfidha-Hammamet in Tunisia.

Celebrations to mark the anniversary took place at Bristol airport with the crew room filled with decorations and party food for pilots and cabin crew operating the day's flights.

Ali Gayward, easyJet UK country manager, said: "We are delighted to be celebrating 20 fantastic years of our base at Bristol Airport. We are so proud to be the largest airline in Bristol, serving 70 destinations with everything from city breaks, holiday hotspots, ski and business destinations offered.

"easyJet looks forward to continuing to provide low fares and friendly customer service to our passengers in Bristol."

Dave Lees, Bristol Airport's chief executive officer, said: "We are delighted to be celebrating this important and invaluable 20-year anniversary between easyJet and Bristol Airport.

"We're immensely proud of the relationship we have with easyJet. They play a big part in the success of Bristol Airport - and we look forward to continuing to build on this in the future - with exciting new destinations, increased passenger numbers and, importantly, the further deployment of the new environmentally friendly quieter and more fuel efficient Airbus NEO aircraft.'