easyJet and easyJet holidays announced on 23 October that they will pay the £66.50 cost of a newborn's first passport for families who book a holiday through the airline, provided the reservation is made by 26 November 2026. The move, first reported by the Daily Star, is part of a wider effort to lower the financial and practical barriers that still surround a baby's first trip abroad.
The offer is modest in monetary terms yet telling. A standard child's passport in the United Kingdom costs £66.50 when applied for online, or £80 by post. For a household watching every line of a holiday budget, the saving is real if unspectacular; for the airline, it is shrewd marketing dressed as generosity. Both things can be true at once, and liberals should feel comfortable saying so.
What easyJet is offering, and by when
Under the scheme, parents who book an easyJet holiday before the 26 November deadline will have the £66.50 online passport fee for their baby covered by the operator. Families simply need to arrange an approved passport photograph, which can be taken at home on a smartphone provided it meets HM Passport Office guidelines. The Mirror confirmed the details of the deadline and the booking conditions.
The initiative follows research by the airline and its tour operator arm, which found that 75 per cent of parents said having their baby's passport covered would make a holiday feel more affordable. Some 80 per cent of parents regarded their baby's first holiday as a defining family moment, and more than half described it as one of their proudest parental milestones. A further 47 per cent said taking their children abroad makes them more curious about the world.
A small policy with a larger argument behind it
It is worth pausing on what this episode reveals about the state of travel in post-Brexit Britain. The paperwork that once accompanied a family trip to the continent has grown heavier since the United Kingdom left the European Union, and the passport, once a formality for intra-European journeys, has returned to the centre of the experience. Every infant now needs one, at £66.50 a time, before the family can so much as board a flight to Mallorca.
In that context, an airline subsidising infant passports is more than a promotional gimmick. It is a quiet acknowledgment that the frictionless mobility Britons once enjoyed in Europe has been replaced by cost and administration, and that private companies are now stepping in to soften edges that public policy has sharpened. One may reasonably ask whether the burden should fall on a carrier's marketing budget rather than on a government that chose to make travel harder for its citizens.
There is also the demographic signal. easyJet holidays has recorded a 10 per cent rise in the number of babies travelling this year compared with 2025, according to The Aviation Hub. Young families are travelling, and they are travelling more, which suggests that the appetite for European connection, cultural and personal, has survived the political turbulence of the past decade. That appetite deserves public support rather than bureaucratic obstruction.
The practicalities parents should know
Getting the photograph right is the most common obstacle. Nearly a quarter of parents surveyed by easyJet said it took around six attempts to capture an acceptable image of their infant, and almost one in ten admitted they had not realised a baby needed a passport at all until they began planning a trip. The Liverpool Echo reported that the scheme is available only to those booking an easyJet holiday, not a flight alone.
To help, easyJet has released a short film on the Peppa Pig Muddy Puddle Parenting YouTube channel, featuring easyJet Captain Kate West, herself a new mother, alongside Mummy Pig. It offers guidance on taking a compliant baby passport photo and practical tips for flying with infants.