easyJet said Tuesday that it expects summer flight capacity to near prepandemic levels this year, and that it has recovered well since the U.K. government said in January that it was removing pandemic travel restrictions.
The budget carrier said summer bookings for the past six weeks have tracked ahead of the same period of fiscal 2019, with customers booking closer to departure. Its summer plans to reach capacity of near 2019’s levels are unchanged and it has a positive outlook for Easter, easyJet said.
“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,” Chief Executive Johan Lundgren said.
The low-cost airline said it ramped up capacity throughout the second quarter, and that in March it was operating at 80% of the capacity for the same month in 2019, before the pandemic.
easyJet said it expects third-quarter flying capacity to be around 90% of 2019’s third quarter.
The company said it continues to see strong demand for the fourth quarter, especially on leisure routes, and that easyJet Holidays continues to strengthen its position. The airline said more than 70% of its program has already sold at significantly stronger margins when compared with 2019.
easyJet said that for the six months ended March 31 it expects to report headline pretax loss--a key metric that strips out exceptional and other one-off items--in the range of 535 million to 565 million pounds ($697 million to $736.1 million). The company reported a headline pretax loss of GBP701 million for the first half of fiscal 2021.
The London-listed company said it expects revenue for the period of GBP1.5 billion compared with GBP240 million a year earlier.
easyJet said that although its pricing remained competitive its ancillary products continued to deliver, and that revenue per seat sold rose to GBP19.56 from GBP12.47 in the year prior.
The airline said it flew 94% of the planned schedule in the past seven days despite the recent increase in the number of crew testing positive for Covid-19, as well as normal operational disruption and air-traffic-control delays. The company said it proactively managed this in advance by making pre-emptive cancellations as early as possible so as to allow most of its customers to rebook on flights departing the same day.
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text