Easyjet to be ‘one of the winners in the recovery’ with busy summer ahead
Easyjet expects to be “one of the winners in the recovery” this summer as it prepares to return close to pre-pandemic levels of traffic.
It is forecasting April-June to be 90% of 2019 levels – when Easter also fell in that quarter – with further improvements in July-September. Its capacity on sale for that quarter is “near 2019 levels”
easyJet expects Q3 capacity to be c.90% of Q3 2019 levels. Q4 FY22 capacity on sale remains at near Q4 2019 levels.
Johan Lundgren, easyJet chief executive, said: “Since travel restrictions were removed, easyJet has seen a strong recovery in trading which has been sustained, resulting in a positive outlook for Easter and beyond, with daily booking volumes for summer currently tracking ahead of those at the same time in FY19.
“We remain confident in our plans which will see us reaching near 2019 flying levels for this summer and emerge as one of the winners in the recovery.”
Losses in the six months to March outperformed expectations and will be between £535m-£565m for the first half of the financial year, compared with £701m last year.
Lundgren added: “easyJet’s performance in the second quarter has been driven by improved trading following the UK Government’s decision to relax testing restrictions with an extra boost from self-help measures which saw us outperform market expectations.”
easyJet flies from 16 UK airports including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.
It has shrugged off recent challenges of late flight cancellations, and said it has “flown 94% of the planned schedule in the last seven days”, with daily flight volumes around 1,500 per day being four times higher than the same point last year.
It added: “This is despite the recent increase in the number of crew testing positive for Covid-19, together with normal operational disruption such as weather and ATC delays.”
