Budget airline EasyJet made another substantial loss in the books last quarter due to the malaise in aviation due to the corona crisis. Still, CEO Johan Lundgren is positive about the summer months and autumn now that the British are allowed to fly again, and more travel restrictions are lifted.
The advance of the contagious Delta variant of the virus is now leading to an increasing number of infections worldwide and concerns in aviation. However, EasyJet says that it follows the developments around variants and that it can deal with them well because of the company’s flexibility.
The budget flyer expects passenger capacity to go to about 60 percent of 2019 levels in the quarter from July to September. In the past three months, that was 17 percent because there were still many travel restrictions in Europe. The British are also only allowed to go abroad again since the end of May.
The British company has been cutting costs since the start of the corona crisis. As a result, EasyJet’s gross loss amounted to £318 million in the third quarter of the broken fiscal year ending June 30. According to the company, this is in line with expectations. In the months of April, May and June, easyJet’s turnover amounted to almost £213 million. The same period a year ago was just £7.2 million as easyJet’s fleet was grounded entirely by the corona crisis.
Lundgren believes that further recovery will not be in a straight line and that we must continue to consider new virus variants. After the summer, the budget fighter expects business bookings to pick up again, for example, Geneva, Berlin and Manchester, but that too depends on travel restrictions.
