Tui plans its biggest-ever programme for next summer with 1.1 million additional seats and at least 11 additional aircraft operating from UK regional airports.
The summer 2024 programme, launched today, will add up to 550,000 additional Tui UK holidays.
The programme sees the launch of new routes but overwhelmingly brings increased frequencies to existing destinations, with Tui UK and Ireland managing director Andrew Flintham emphasising the increased flexibility and choice this will give customers.
Tui will have more than 10 million seats available for the summer, with additional flying from 13 UK airports.
It will offer 250,000 additional seats to Turkey, 250,000 to Spain, 250,000 to Greece and Cyprus, 300,000 to North Africa – Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt – and 50,000 to Italy and Croatia.
The programme will also offer new itineraries on Marella Cruises.
Flintham said: “Our customers want more flexibility and to be able to choose a departure airport close to home and that is what the Tui 2024 summer programme is designed to do.”
He declined to be drawn on the impact of the expansion on Tui’s Atol licence, noting some flight sales could be seat only rather than package holiday bookings, but said: “We will need a bigger Atol with the holidays we are adding.”
Tui recently lost its long-held position as the UK’s biggest Atol holder to rival Jet2holidays.
Flintham noted: “There are two ways of looking at Atol. You can look at what you hope to sell. We look at what we expect to sell.”
Glasgow will see an additional two aircraft based at the airport, with 180,000 extra seats making it Tui’s biggest-ever programme from the city – adding new flights to Cape Verde and Greece.
Birmingham will see one additional aircraft and 100,000 extra seats, East Midlands the same.
Newcastle will have an additional aircraft based at the airport and 120,000 extra seats, and Manchester an extra aircraft and 130,000 additional seats, taking capacity from the northwest to 2.1 million.
In the south, Bournemouth and Bristol airports will have additional aircraft based at each, adding 120,000 seats from Bristol and 60,000 from Bournemouth, while Exeter will see 15,000 additional seats.
There will be an additional 200,000 seats available from Gatwick – taking capacity from the airport to two million and close to 200 weekly departures – 30,000 seats added to and from Stansted, and 14 additional flights a week from Luton.
Tui will also add 40,000 seats from Cardiff and there will be new flights to Dalaman, Turkey, from Teesside.
The Birmingham programme will include Agadir, Boa Vista, Cancun, Enfidha, Hurghada, Kavala, Marrakech, Orlando-Melbourne Florida, Montego Bay, Pula, Punta Cana, Sal and Sharm El Sheikh.
Bournemouth will see a new route to Enfidha, Tunisia and increased frequencies to Ibiza, Lanzarote, Menorca, Heraklion, Paphos and Tenerife. The programme from Bristol will offer new routes to Boa Vista and Cape Verde.
Newcastle will see new routes to Cape Verde and Egypt, East Midlands will offer new flights to Cape Verde, and Cardiff will have flights to Sharm El-Sheik
The 2024 summer programme goes on sale from today.