Perhaps the £279 rtn tickets reflect the leg room? NY direct from LBA (or other smallish regional airports) is a bit of a joke (or an ego trip) with oil at anything over $60. This little Xmas trip will end up costing the company far more than they will make, so who benifits? for the crews it will be interesting first time, the second will seem like a yawn and there after, they will look forward to a short AGP trip, crew meals, allowance do/will they reflect long haul duties?
Come on Jet2 stay with what you do well and forget long haul, it will do you more harm than good, Globespam have proved that,if your in out doubt visit Skytrax (Google) and click on air line customer feed back.
These are elderly 757 and if can go wrong it will on the wrong side of the pond and the bills will go up even quicker