Luton Airport based budget airline easyJet is planning to launch a holiday arm of the airline over the next month, despite seeing what happened to Monarch and Thomas Cook. The all-Airbus airline wants to get the business up and running in the United Kingdom before Christmas and says it expects to break even during its first year in business.

easyJet to get 12 more A320neos

Reports coming out of the Dubai Airshow seem to confirm easyJet’s expansion plans with orders by easyJet to increase its fleet of A320neos by 12 new aircraft. This increase will give easyJet 159 A320neos and a total of 480 A320 family of single-aisle jets.

It is not hard to see what easyJet is trying to achieve when you factor in that around 20 million passengers fly with easyJet to European to holiday destinations. Of these 20 million passengers, only half a million book a hotel or holiday rental at the same time as their tickets.

easyJet thinks that there is an opportunity in the holiday market

According to easyJet, the holiday market is worth £61bn ($79bn) in Europe and £13bn ($17bn) in the United Kingdom.

easyJet chief executive Johan Lundgren believes that by adding a holiday (vacation) branch to the airline it will bring "flexibility and excellent value" to the package holiday marketplace.

The airline claims that it has seen a significant opportunity to establish a holiday based business, having learned from the mistakes others made.

When asked about the new holiday business Lundgren told aviation website FlightGlobal the following:

"We have built a brand new organization, from the ground up, to replace the previously outsourced commission-based model," it says. "So we can directly sell to customers and grow our business quickly and at scale."

It would appear as though easyJet have done their homework and have seen that many people are moving away from the traditional seven and 14 night holidays and will tailor packages around customer’s needs.

People no longer want traditional one and two week holidays

Unlike Monarch and Thomas Cook, who all had their eggs in one basket easyJet will be able to enter the marketplace with a small upfront investment and very little risk.

"We believe there is a gap in the market for a modern, relevant and flexible business for today's consumer," says Lundgren.

"We are now able to offer our customers more than 100 amazing beach and city holiday destinations, pairing Europe's best short-haul flight network with more than 5,000 of Europe's best hotels."

Just last month easyJet announced that they would be selling package holidays to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after the lifting of a four-year ban that came into effect after the downing of a Russian airliner.

easyJet is also saying that it wants to be the first airline to operate net-zero carbon flights as it strives to offset its aircrafts carbon emissions.

What do you think about easyJet's plan to offer holiday packages? Please let us know in the comments.