Jet2.com and Jet2holidays marked a major milestone this week when we took formal delivery of the last of 34 brand new Next Generation 737-800 aircraft from Boeing – taking the number of aircraft in our fleet to 100.

The aircraft, which seats 189 passengers, was handed over to us at a ceremony at Boeing’s Seattle Delivery Centre in the United States. The aircraft has now been flown to the UK, where it will be fitted with special finishing touches, including bespoke seating, before coming into operation in the next few weeks.

Six lucky winners joined us for the celebrations, after winning our social media competition. Tyler and Declan Adams from Bishop Auckland, Gareth Brown and Amy Anderson from Edinburgh, and Max Jones and Nicholas Heyes from Cheshire, were chosen from more than 2,000 entries after submitting a video entry explaining why they deserved to win a place on a once-in-lifetime four-night trip to Seattle.

This newest aircraft is the final one of 34 Boeing 737-800NG aircraft which have joined our fleet since September 2016. The aircraft have an approximate list price of $3.3 billion, however the company has negotiated significant discounts from this price. This fleet enables the company to continue its growth, meaning we can fly more package holiday and flight-only customers to sunshine, ski, and city destinations across Europe, the Canary Islands and the Mediterranean.

As well as Jet2.com being the UK’s third largest airline, Jet2holidays is now the second largest tour operator in the UK. The company’s flight-only product was enjoyed by 5.37 million passengers in the last financial year (year ended 31 March 2018), a growth of 48% year-on-year, whilst demand for ATOL protected package holidays continues to grow, as Jet2holidays took 2.5 million customers on real package holidays, an increase of 45% year-on-year. In total, the company flew 10.38 million flight-only and package holiday passengers (one-way) in the last financial year (year ended 31 March 2018), and this combined leisure travel business increased revenues by 42% to £2,223.2m.

Our growth is set to continue, with over 12 million seats and three new destinations (Chania in Crete, Bourgas in Bulgaria, and Izmir in Turkey) on sale for Summer 19 from across our nine UK bases – a capacity increase of 15%.