Philip Meeson, executive chairman of Jet2 plc, expressed his confidence in package holidays, during a statement delivered at the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday (1 September).

“We are very confident that package holidays are the right product for price-conscious customers, especially in challenging economic times, and this provides further opportunity for us to grow our customer base, though as previously announced, margins may come under some pressure in the short term,” he said.

Meeson added that Jet2 had benefited from the “significant investment” it had made ahead of the summer 2022 season, including its decision to retain more than 8,000 staff during the pandemic.

He emphasised how the “long-term differentiation” of its Jet2.com and Jet2holidays brands had allowed it to increase capacity for this summer by 14% compared with summer 2019. Meeson also stressed that the company had suffered no cancellations “due to any Jet2 resource constraints”.

“Overall customer bookings, though a little later than normal, have remained consistently strong,” said Meeson.

Jet2 has increased its proportion of package holiday customers this summer, which has risen by 13 percentage points compared with summer 2019, while load factor remains only 1.4 points lower than in 2019, despite the increase in capacity.

“Pleasingly, the difficult return to normal operations experienced in early summer 2022 due to the lack of planning and investment by many airports and associated suppliers, has abated significantly,” added Meeson.

Jet2’s pricing has been “robust” for both summer 2022 and the forthcoming winter season, while winter sales were described as “satisfactory”, with “some way still to go” in the booking cycle.