Corendon Airlines hopes to increase the number of seats and range of destinations it offers from the UK in summer 2023.
The airline, which currently flies from the UK to Turkey and Greece, is also keen to launch a winter programme which could include the Canaries, Egypt and some late summer Turkey departures.
UK commercial representative Paul Riches said he hoped to reveal further details of both plans later this month, adding: “There is lots more opportunity from the UK market.”
Riches said: “Talking to the trade over the last year has shown us that there’s an appetite to work with an independently-owned, trade-friendly airline, especially after the demise of Thomas Cook and Monarch – which resulted in the loss of a lot of lift to Turkey in particular.
“We’ve got six aircraft based in German airports but going forward, we’d like to be basing one, two, three aircraft in UK airports. Once we base more aircraft here we can offer more routes.”
Riches said Corendon would offer 250,000 return or half-a-million one-way seats this summer, with 30% of inventory already sold.
The airline is currently working with brands including On The Beach, Love Holidays, Travel Republic, Tui, Thomas Cook, Broadway Travel and Holiday Gems and is in talks with Hays Travel and Barrhead Travel as well as flight-only specialists such as Southall Travel.
Asked if agents felt comfortable with dynamic packaging after Covid left many unable to secure refunds for their clients, Riches said: “There is a little bit of resistance but it’s slowly coming back.
“You can’t live off a Jet2holidays package – there’s very little margin, so once it settles down, I think those that have an Atol or are part of a franchise model that has access to an Atol will become more confident putting holiday elements together again.”
He added: “I can understand that people didn’t want to take the risk. But Corendon did a good job on refunds. We did the right thing. We were new in the market and the last thing we wanted to do was to become a mini-Ryanair.”
Corendon Travel Group owns 23 aircraft, 10 hotels, several destination management companies and a Dutch tour operator. It has two owners, one based in Holland and the other in Antalya.
Riches said the business had grown into a low-cost leisure airline which also has a number of wet leases to enable it to operate about 50 aircraft in the summer.