easyJet has relaunched holiday and leisure flights from the UK to European destinations.

Throughout May the airline will operate 186 flights to ‘green list’ countries with the first taking off from London Luton to Faro at 08:55 this morning.

This was shortly followed by a flight from Gatwick to Faro, followed by more flights to Faro and a Gibraltar flight later today.

The airline currently operates more seats to European green list destinations than any other UK operator with more than 1.6 million seats now available to these destinations.

easyJet and easyJet holidays saw UK bookings surge within hours of the UK government announcement to reveal the initial list and the airline has added more than 105,000 additional seats on sale across existing routes from the UK.

easyJet operates to Portugal, Gibraltar, Israel and Iceland which are on the green list.

The low-cost carrier has also said it will continue to operate to ‘amber’ countries where it sees demand among customers willing to take the quarantine as required on return.

Johan Lundgren, chief executive of easyJet, commented: “We are delighted to be getting back to what we do best today and flying our customers on international leisure trips once again either for a break or to reunite with loved ones after many months apart.

“We know the pent-up demand is there – we see it every time that restrictions are eased and so to cater for it we have put an extra 100,000 seats on sale from the UK to green list destinations to help our customers take to the skies once again.”

He added: “We are absolutely committed to a safe restart and are confident this can happen while protecting both the health system and the success of the vaccine programme.

“We are disappointed that so few countries were put onto the green list as it is simply not justified by the data or the science and is inconsistent with the approach to reopen the domestic economy and so expect the number of countries on the green list to grow next month to include many of our popular summer destinations.

“Meanwhile we have industry-leading flexible policies so customers can book with confidence and change their plans if they need to.

“We look forward to welcoming our customers back onboard in the coming days, weeks and months.”