UK holidaymakers take off for the first time this year as easyJet relaunches leisure flights from the UK

easyJet has today relaunched holiday and leisure flights from the UK to European destinations flying customers on long-awaited holidays or trips to visit family and friends. Throughout May the airline will operate 186 flights to Green list countries with the first Green list flight taking off from London Luton to Faro at 08:55 this morning shortly followed by a flight from Gatwick to Faro followed by more flights to Faro and a Gibraltar flight later today.

The airline currently operates more seats to European Green list destinations than any other UK operator with more than 1.6 million seats now available to these destinations. easyJet and easyJet holidays saw UK bookings surge within hours of the UK Government announcement to reveal the initial ‘Green list’ and the airline has added more than 105,000 additional seats on sale across existing Green routes from the UK. The airline will also relaunch its route from Newcastle to Faro which will operate up to three times a week from 19 July 2021, with both flights and holidays now available to book online at easyJet.com

During the lockdown period the fleet of aircraft have been maintained in a flight ready condition to enable the airline to resume flights at the right time and crew have received all necessary training.

easyJet operates to Portugal, Gibraltar, Israel and Iceland which are on the Green list, and we continue to operate our flying schedule to Amber routes where we see demand amongst customers willing to take the quarantine as required on their return.

The only European country on the Red list is Turkey and as a result we have cancelled flights there until end of June

As customers return to travel today, easyJet makes it more seamless for customers to understand and explore their travel options with all-new, easy-to-use online travel planning tool easyjet.com/en/covid-19-travel-hub. The travel map helps customers stay informed on the latest travel guidelines to and from the 35 countries on easyJet’s European network and filters by which are most open for travel. It includes obtaining real-time information when searching for popular destination types, including beaches, city breaks, outdoor getaways, and business travel.

Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet, commented:

“We are delighted to be getting back to what we do best today and flying our customers on international leisure trips once again either for a break or to reunite with loved ones after many months apart. We know the pent up demand is there – we see it every time that restrictions are eased and so to cater for it we have put an extra 100,000 seats on sale from the UK to Green list destinations to help our customers take to the skies once again.

“We are absolutely committed to a safe restart and are confident this can happen while protecting both the health system and the success of the vaccine programme. We are disappointed that so few countries were put onto the green list as it is simply not justified by the data or the science and is inconsistent with the approach to reopen the domestic economy and so expect the number of countries on the Green list to grow next month to include many of our popular summer destinations. Meanwhile we have industry-leading flexible policies so customers can book with confidence and change their plans if they need to. We look forward to welcoming our customers back onboard in the coming days, weeks and months.”