Greek tourism minister Vassilis Kikilias confirmed the airline and operator would offer an additional 600,000 seats to Greece from the beginning of April next year.

Kikilias said the Jet2 programme would include more than 270 weekly flights, including new services from Manchester and Birmingham to Athens starting from 15 April.

A Jet2 spokesperson said: “Just as we always do, we have responded very quickly to demand, increasing capacity and adding more flights. 

“As such, we are looking forward to a fantastic summer 2022 programme, with more than one million additional seats on sale compared to summer 2019.

"We now have more than 2.3 million outbound and inbound seats on sale between Greece and our 10 UK bases for summer 2022.”

The airline and operator will fly to Athens, Crete (Heraklion and Chania), Corfu, Kefalonia, Lesvos, Mykonos, Skiathos, Santorini, Kos, Kalamata, Preveza, Rhodes, Halkidiki and Zante next summer.

“We are the UK’s leading airline and tour operator to Greece when it comes to the number of peak flights,” the spokesperson added.

Despite the expansion, Jet2’s capacity is not yet back to pre-Covid levels. Jet2’s Atol permits it to carry 3.75 million, making it second only in terms of passengers licensed to Tui UK, which is licensed for 5.1 million.

Jet2’s Atol peaked at around 4.8 million in May 2020, following the collapse of Thomas Cook, but was pared back as the pandemic progressed. Tui UK’s licensed capacity pre-pandemic was 5.55 million.