Excel airways was a low cost charter service and also have the facility of scheduled xl airlines but the airline ceased its operations on 12 September 2008 as it went in to administration. The main head quarters of the xl air were in Crawley, West Sussex that was near London Gatwick Airport. The excel airlines were part of the XL Leisure group. Excel airways is a trading name for excel airways UK limited. The excel airline operated from its three major hubs in Manchester, Glasgow and London Gatwick. Excel air was used to serve long haul and short haul charter flights to some leisure destinations in very affordable rates. Xl airline also operated its services from Bristol, Newcastle, East Midlands, Knock and Birmingham.

There are two other brands which work under the label of xl airways these brands are xl airways France and xl airways Germany. Both of these brands were not affected by the problems of XL Leisure group. Excel airline was established in 1994 as Sabre Airways. They started their operations on 17 December 1994. The airline company changed its name to Excel as they came under acquisitions in 2000. 67% stake of the firm were taken by Libra Holidays Group. In the year of 2004, March 40.5% of the excel airways were purchased by Avion Group.

As excel airlines were a new charter airline so they concentrated on the flights from Manchester and Gatwick to holiday destinations that include Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Turkey, St Lucia, the Canaries and Egypt. In the year of 2006, excel airways signed an agreement with GE Commerical Aviation Services to get two next generation Boeing 737-900ER aircrafts. These were the very first ones of latest variant of Boeing 737 aircrafts which operated in UK. The air crafts were delieverd in May,2008.

As excel airline purchased these three Boeing 747-300 aircrafts they saw the merger of their sister firm Air Atlanta Europe in the year of 2006. These aircrafts were used for flights between Orlando and UK, however their lease expired in November of 2007 and they left the fleet.

In the year of 2006, 30 October some members of management bought XL leisure group from Avion Group. The whole firm and web site XL.com was taken by Excel Airways in November of 2006 as the brand was relaunched on major level. The sister airlines of the group were also rebranded, which included Star Europe in Germany and Star Airlines France. As for now excel airways group is offering their services of charter plans to tour operators and also brokers.