Tui has grown accustomed to being number one in the UK, its most important market. So imagine the consternation when in February, Yorkshire’s Jet2holidays casually added half a million seats to its licence, ousting Tui as the UK’s biggest Atol holder.
The last time this happened was in the 1990s, when the former Airtours brand briefly overtook Tui in its previous guise as Thomson. Jet2 wasn’t even born then; its first flight left Leeds Bradford in 2003, with Jet2holidays launching in 2007, initially licensed to carry just 23,000 passengers.
