The airline on Thursday (12 October) revealed it expects easyJet holidays to contribute around £120 million towards a full-year (year to 30 September) group profit before tax of between £440 million and £460 million. "EasyJet holidays continues to outperform," the airline remarked.

Johan Lundgren, easyJet chief executive, singled out easyJet holidays, whose passengers TTG understands currently only occupy around 5% of easyJet’s total seats, as a key pillar of the group’s ambitious new medium-term growth plans, which will see it aim to deliver annual profits by tax (PBT) of £1 billion.

"Our new medium-term targets provide the building blocks to deliver a PBT greater than £1 billion," said Lundgren. "This will be driven by reducing winter losses, upgauging our fleet and growing easyJet holidays."

This growth, easyJet stated in its full-year results announcement on Thursday, would involve growing easyJet holidays "to deliver over £250 million PBT".

EasyJet holidays was launched in 2019 and was subsequently launched to the trade a year later during the pandemic.

It served 1.3 million passengers last year, and easyJet has set an ambitious target of 2.3 million holidays passengers over the coming year after extending easyJet holidays’ Atol by just shy of another million seats.

EasyJet also revealed plans on Thursday to more than double its current aircraft order book, allowing it to place larger aircraft on profitable routes and get more passengers into slot-constrained airports.