Jet2 staff to share £45m windfall

Jet2 staff
By Linsey McNeill
06/07/2023
Home » Jet2 staff to share £45m windfall

Jet2 employees are to receive a bonus for the first time in four years after the travel giant announced a £391m annual pre-tax profit, which was 48% higher than pre-COVID.

The company said non-management staff will receive 6% of pre-tax profits under the reinstated Discretionary Colleague Porfit Share Scheme.

Management will also receive a bonus under the Discretionary Bonus Scheme.

Jet2 said its 8,000 or so staff will share a total windfall of around £45m, to be paid this month.

It said the payments were the first since 2019, before the pandemic.

In its statement to the London Stock Exchange, Jet2 said: “Throughout the year, our colleagues have worked tirelessly, particularly during the challenging period of early summer 2022.

“The Board is hugely appreciative for their tremendous support and efforts, which enabled Jet2.com and Jet2holidays to fulfil the dreams of so many customers, taking them on their well-deserved and eagerly anticipated holidays.”

Staff had already received an 8% pay increase in the last financial year and a summer ‘thank you bonus’ of £1,000 each, followed by a 9% pay rise this year.

“We firmly believe that happy and well paid colleagues are fundamental to the future success of our business,” added Jet2.

The company also launched a share scheme last September, which allows staff with at least three years’ service to buy shares at a discount. It said the take-up rate was more than 60%.

Chairman Philip Meeson, who announced today that he was stepping down, said the company’s ambition remains to be the UK’s number one leisure travel business.

Jet2 has 15.29m seats on sale for summer 2023, 7.5% more than last year, and although average load factors are 0.8% behind, he said the number of higher margin package holiday customers was up five percentage points.

“Despite the Group facing various input cost pressures such as fuel, carbon taxes, a strengthened US dollar and wage increases, as well as investment to support the well-being and work-life balance of our colleagues, pricing to date for both our package holidays and flight-only products has been robust and consequently margins per booked passenger satisfactory,” he added.

“Looking forward, although we continue to believe that the end-to-end package holiday is a resilient and popular product, particularly during difficult economic times and our ability to offer truly variable duration holidays enables our customers to tailor their holiday plans to suit their individual budgets, we are cognisant of how quickly the macro-economic environment is evolving and how this may affect consumers’ future spending.

“On that basis, and with the peak summer months of July, August and September not yet complete plus the majority of winter 2023/2024 seat capacity still to sell, it remains premature as is always the case at this time of year, to provide definitive guidance as to Group profitability for the financial year ending 31 March 2024.”

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