LOW-COST airline easyJet has predicted record profits during its peak season despite cautioning over a “challenging” summer of airport strike action.
The Luton-based carrier said that based on current booking trends and a strong demand for holidays, it expects Q4 to deliver another record pre-tax profit performance although it pointed to “very congested and inefficient” ATC (air traffic control) systems with the “whole industry seeing challenging conditions this summer”.
EasyJet’s confidence comes after the company saw a record headline pre-tax profit of £203 million for the three months to June 30, against losses of £114m a year ago after increasing its flight programme by 5% to 146,816.
Johan Lundgren, the chief executive of easyJet, said: “Our Q3 performance has been underpinned by strong passenger demand for easyJet’s network and services. We continue to provide great value to customers with around half of easyJet’s fares currently on sale still under £50.
“We are absolutely focused on mitigating the impact of the challenging external environment on our customers and flying them on their well-earned holidays.”
Noting that the airline continued to see “good momentum as we move into Q4”, he added: “We will be operating over 160,000 flights and expect to deliver another record PBT performance. This winter we are adding more than 15% capacity and we see bookings ahead of the same period last year.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here