European budget airline easyJet says it set a new company record at the tail end of the summer holiday season.
In a single day, on September 1, immediately after the UK's August bank holiday weekend, the airline operated more than 2,000 flights and carried over 343,000 passengers.
The airline's new record day comes as easyJet runs its biggest ever summer season, with eight additional Airbus A320 family aircraft added to its UK-based fleet at Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow and the opening of a new base in Newcastle.
It said that more than 39 million seats operated to and from the UK across the summer, which is half a million more than last year, and 53 new routes were launched this summer, including new services to Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.
“This record is all about our customers,” said Kevin Doyle, easyJet's UK Country Manager.
“As we operate our biggest ever summer programme, including new routes and more flying from airports right across the UK, we continue to focus on making travel easy for customers across the country with more choice, great value fares and a warm welcome onboard from our fantastic crew.”
With school holidays ending and changeable British weather over the bank holiday, many travellers made late-summer trips; Palma, Faro, Alicante and Milan were among the most popular last-minute destinations, easyJet said.
Meanwhile, the top easyJet Holidays packages included trips to Palma, Tenerife and Rhodes.
easyJet added that "great value fares" are still on sale for late-summer travel, highlighting examples such as London Gatwick to Madrid, from £21.99, London Luton to Bordeaux, from £15.99, and Manchester to Majorca, from £16.99.
