The airline is to lease an Airbus A330 from Malaysia’s AirAsia X and base it at Manchester during the summer peak. However, speculation that it would use the 360-plus seat airliner to fly to Florida or other long-haul destinations was quashed by Steve Heapy, managing director of Jet2.com and Jet2 Holidays.

“I can confirm 100% that we will not be doing long-haul,” he said. Heapy added that the aircraft would be used on busy short-haul routes “to our existing destinations”.

Speculation was prompted by the gap in the market that Monarch will leave when it quits long-haul next spring and withdraws its own two Airbus A330s. Virgin Atlantic has already announced it will fill the vacated Monarch route from Gatwick to Tobago from next summer.

Jet2 does offer Christmas flights to New York, but these are a small number on its existing fleet of narrow-body aircraft.