Leeds-based Jet2 (marketed as Jet2.com) has celebrated, this Sunday, the 20th anniversary of its first flight. The holiday airline, the United Kingdom’s fourth-largest by number of seats offered in 2022, celebrated the feat with a party in its home airport of Leeds-Bradford.

🎉 Happy Birthday https://t.co/ehFKC388cU! 🎉

Yesterday we celebrated 20 years of flying with a fabulous event at @LBIAirport! ✈

Thanks to all of our lovely customers who helped celebrate with us 🎉

Cheers to 20 years, and many more to come 2️⃣0️⃣#CheersTo20Years #Jet2 pic.twitter.com/ZRFS9R2ECg

— Jet2tweets (@jet2tweets) February 13, 2023

According to a press release launched by Jet2, 40 of its employees also celebrated their 20th anniversary with the company, “over 100 million happy holidaymakers later”, and three customers who were celebrating their birthdays that day were given a pair of return flights.

While Jet2’s first Summer season counted with a mere two aircraft serving two back in 2003, this Summer the airline will operate 115 aircraft to 56 “sunshine” destinations from its bases in Leeds, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London/Stansted, Manchester and Newcastle.

Jet2’s CEO, Steve Heapy, stated in the press release that “our anniversary provides the ideal opportunity to look back and reflect upon all that has been achieved since we first launched. When we first started operating flights 20 years ago, VIP customer service, great flight times and value were key for customers, and this formula remains just as important to this day.”

Jet2holidays becomes Jet2’s driving force

In 2007, Jet2 launched a spin-off business that would change its fate: Jet2holidays, its own holiday package brand.

The new company grew at a remarkable pace over the years — so much so that, a day after celebrating its 20th anniversary, Jet2holidays became the UK’s largest tour operator, according to the country’s ATOL license figures.

ATOL (acronym for Air Travel Organisers License) is Britain’s protection for customers of package business, should such businesses fail. It gained particular attention when Thomas Cook failed back in 2019. Jet2 overtook, by ATOL’s most recent figures, TUI in terms of its yearly license size — the Leeds company now has 5,859,600 passengers in its clearance.

Benefitting from its already existing network, Jet2holidays was an easy evolution for an airline that already focused on leisure travel.

Today, Jet2 is a major force in the bases where it operates from. According to data by Cirium’s Diio Mi application, in 2022 the airline was the largest, by number of seats offered, in its bases of Leeds and Newcastle. In the other ones, with the exception of Edinburgh, it was at least in the top three.

And Jet2holidays plays a huge role in this presence. According to the airline’s latest financial filing, for the six months ended in September 2022 65.9% of its passengers were “higher margin package holiday customers”.

Besides focusing on the holiday package business, commercially Jet2 tries to position itself as a “family-friendly” company — a formula that seems to work for them, particularly given their solid margins. In the period mentioned above Jet2 plc, the group that comprises both the airline and the holiday company, posted a GBP356 million net profit over a GBP3,567.6 million revenue.

“Becoming the UK’s largest tour operator is a significant milestone in the history of Jet2holidays”, stated Group CEO Steve Heapy in a press release, “but it will not change a single thing that we do. Our continued success is because we have the best team in the industry who work tirelessly to look after our customers, and we will never lose sight of that fundamental principle.”