"Today Londoners would be angry to pay that much," he laughs. "It shows how people's expectations have changed over the past five years."
Magliano's new job - he was promoted to director of strategic marketing last week - is to adapt easyJet's marketing to this new age of air travel.
"Stelios (Haji-Iannou) has gone (to manage the broader easyGroup) and the airline can no longer be portrayed as an underdog. EasyJet must be repositioned as a mainstream player," he says.
Former design consultancy and advertising agency man Magliano, 39, created the Go brand for British Airways and successfully pitted it against easyJet for four years. Then, last August, he found himself working for his former adversary after easyJet's £400m purchase of Go.
Having built a powerful reputation within the sector, straight-talking Magliano was given the top sales and marketing job and has spent the past eight months merging the operations. Last Saturday, the integration was complete. All former Go planes, crews and front-desk operations are branded easyJet. His baby, Go, has gone.
But post-merger life has been too hectic to spend much time in mourning.
"It's been exhausting," he admits. "More draining even than starting up Go. We're talking 60- to 80-hour weeks."
Magliano is personable, which has been particularly important when combining two former enemies. He admits that because the firms were of a similar size, any small difference between them became a major issue.
"A venture capitalist told me that mergers never get better than they are at day one; day one was a bloody great shock for everyone," he says. "It's been a remarkable achievement, particularly when you consider that during those eight months the whole operation managed to grow by 40%."
It is this sort of growth that makes Magliano's role so critical to the airline's success. EasyJet, which already flies 65 aircraft, is scheduled to triple in size over the next five years, but the brand needs to retain its focus and its edge.
He has therefore handed day-to-day responsibility for sales and marketing to commercial director Mike Cooper to begin a fundamental brand review.
Magliano talks of "creative refreshment", but is quick to point out that certain aspects of this iconic brand - the orange colour and the logo's typeface - are sacrosanct under the easyGroup brand licence agreement.
However, he is looking at replacing the cartoon Boeing aircraft - easyJet recently chose Airbus for a major order of planes. He wants a sonic logo - Go's jaunty jingle was highly successful - and is reviewing the tone of voice of its advertising and communication.
The latter is due to a strategic rethink. "Although they had strongly defined brands, neither easyJet nor Go have ever had a really good idea of where customers come from. We need a much better idea of how to penetrate markets," says Magliano.
This will be a complex task given that the bulk of easyJet's growth is likely to be in untapped, foreign markets. For this reason Magliano will categorise the airline's markets into the 'mature' (the Stansted or Geneva catchment areas, for example), the 'transitional' (Go had a strong brand in Italy, easyJet does not) and the 'fresh' (easyJet sees potential for growth in Germany and Scandinavia).
He estimates that the project will take six to nine months to create a flexible brand architecture. This begs the question of what comes next for this high achiever.
It's been a roller-coaster five years. From Go's launch, to the 3i-led management buyout in 2001, to its merger with easyJet. Magliano is understood to have made a tidy personal sum out of the deals, which must have whetted his entrepreneurial appetite. He won't be drawn on his plans, stressing that his focus is on easyJet. But Nick Howarth, managing director of HHCL/ Red Cell, who has worked both as Magliano's colleague and agency adviser, says: "I expect David to leave airlines and do something completely different. Not as a marketing director and not a return to the marketing services sector - maybe another business start-up."
Magliano admits his real passion is in brand design, so maybe this is a clue to his future direction. Equally, he talks about the valuable experience he has gained in retail and the internet through his time in airlines.
Some former colleagues suspect he will reform his partnership with Barbara Cassani, former chief executive of Go.
Having created and managed a pace-setting brand and shown an uncanny ability for spotting talent, expect whatever Magliano does to get off to a flyer.
BIOGRAPHY
1992-1997: Consultant, Imagination
1997-1998: Business director, Ogilvy & Mather
1998-2002: Sales and marketing director, Go
2002-present: Sales and marketing director to director of strategic
marketing, easyJet
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