A total of 37 new routes across nine UK bases are being introduced as Jet2.com and Jet2holidays lay on a record of more than 9.6 million seats for summer 2018. A fleet of 82 aircraft will support the company’s largest flying programme, covering 57 destinations and 292 routes.
The operator confirmed a 60% capacity hike to Turkey with 140,000 additional seats. Major expansion to Greece includes more than 250,000 extra seats covering destinations such as Halkidiki, Kefalonia, Kos, Rhodes and Corfu. Cyprus capacity will rise with more than 110,000 additional seats. Costa de Almeria is introduced as more seats are made available to Spanish resorts, including 920,000 seats to Alicante, over 940,000 seats to Palma and 1.4 million seats to the Canary Islands.
Faro in Portugal will gain more than 700,000 while "major growth" is planned for city destinations such as Krakow, Prague and Split. Italy will see 75,000 additional seats to Italy with growth planned for Naples and Verona.
New UK departures airports of Birmingham and Stansted gain new routes for summer 2018. A total of 13 will be added from Birmingham and five from Stansted. New routes and more frequent flights have been scheduled for Leeds Bradford, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Edinburgh airports.
Company chief executive, Steve Heapy, said: "This will be our biggest ever summer programme, giving our independent travel agency partners more choice and flexibility than ever with our award-winning package holiday operator.
"Such sustained growth is only possible by looking after our agency partners and working with them, which shows that our continued investment into our partnership approach on top of offering great value package holidays and family friendly flights is working. This success with independent travel agents across our new and existing bases proves that our formula is the right one."