Jet two Airways

There are a few things you probably didn't know about the UK's 4th biggest carrier. Launched in 2008, the first tagline "The Airlines of the North" was abandoned when it opened its first facility just South of Manchester, but Jet2 is still heavily targeted at the top half of England. Jet2 sent its first Boeing 737 from Leeds Bradford to Amsterdam on 12 February 2003.

Having a sole goal and only two planes, the carrier was certainly still at the beginning. Prior to Jet2 Jet2, it was Channel Express that transported freight and mail from its Bournemouth hub to the Channel Islands and Europe on Royal Mail business. Jet2 transported 604,563 passengers on 5,542 missions in 2003.

Jet2 is the UK's 4th biggest carrier after BA, EasyJet and Flybe, ahead of Virgin Atlantic in passenger numbers. Jet2, with a 75 plane squadron, has only two models: the Boeing 737 and the bigger Boeing 747. When a 31-year-old Jet2 737 (now 32) made two crash landing operations in the same number of consecutive week, the question of the dependability of older planes was addressed last year.

In Telegraph Travel's last year's award ceremony, Jet2 took two places and ranked 4th in the short-haul carrier class, behind only Aurigny Air, Icelandair and Swiss, and beat KLM, Lufthansa and EasyJet. Eventually in 2011, the carrier was audited by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) when it pledged 9.99 as part of its 2011 solar air ticket sales on a £9.99 billboard decorated with solar, sandy and ocean views, but only Belfast, Amsterdam and Düsseldorf were involved.