Added cost pressures at easyJet (EZJ) haven’t stopped management from upgrading full-year forecasts. The airline group has increased pre-tax profit expectations for the year to September to between £550m and £590m, from the previously flagged range of £530m to £580m. That's despite a number of increased expenses for the airline, most notably the air traffic controller strikes in France. easyJet cancelled 2,606 flights during the third quarter, which it expects to add around £25m in disruption costs. Chief executive John Lundgren said the company would file a complaint with the European Commission regarding the strikes.
Losses incurred while opening its new slots at Berlin Tegel airport are expected to be £175m for the full year, compared with £160m previously forecast, due to weaker revenue per available seat than previously guided. The airline is overhauling the inefficient schedule it had inherited when it took over the slots from the now collapsed Air Berlin and hopes to break even by the 2019 financial year.
Outside of the added costs, the third quarter was a good one for easyJet. Total sales were up 14 per cent to £1.6bn, while more people paying to choose seats and add baggage boosted ancillary revenue by a fifth to £328m. The budget airline carried 24.4m passengers, a 9.3 per cent increase on the third quarter in 2017, helping to increase load factor by 0.3 percentage points to 93.4 per cent.
