Heritage - The Jet2.com Era
Since the departure of the first flight in February 2003, Jet2.com’s growth has been impressive. 10 destinations were served from Leeds in that first summer. Belfast became the second scheduled base, with services beginning in April 2004 with a flight to Prague, and Manchester followed close behind. By September 2004, we had carried over 1,000,000 passengers.
2005 continued the period of expansion as Jet2.com brought its successful brand to Newcastle, Edinburgh and Blackpool. Also in 2005, another aircraft type was introduced with the arrival of the first two Boeing 757-200 aircraft. Initially seating 235 passengers and capable of operating flights in excess of eight hours non-stop, the Boeing 757 has allowed the major routes to grow and the route network to expand beyond the range of the smaller Boeing 737-300.
With the company name changing to Jet2.com Limited in early 2006, the Channel Express name was finally consigned to the history books. Fitting given that this name was synonymous with freight airline activities and our 5,000,000th passenger was carried in March of 2006.
Since 2006, Jet2.com has continued to expand both its fleet of aircraft and combination of destinations served. In the past two years, East Midlands and Glasgow have been added as new bases, meaning that scheduled flights are now available from eight different airports in the North of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The airline remains unique in Europe in being primarily a scheduled passenger carrier, but one also undertaking very successful and high quality charter flying as well as continued Royal Mail overnight contract movements. Over 168 scheduled routes are flown from 8 bases to 56 different destinations carrying almost 5,000,000 passengers, whilst Jet2.com charter activity touched 143 airports in 41 different countries in 2011. Over 900 flights are operated every week during the summer and in excess of 35,000 flights per year.
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