Daily Management Review

EasyJet Expects To Fly More Flights From Late May


04/14/2021




The British low cost airline easyJet effectively shrugged off concerns about the hit to air travel because of a potential third wave of Covid-19 infections in continental Europe – the possibility of which has dampened the hopes of a rebound in the travel industry this summer, as the airline said that it expected to start flying more flights starting late May.
 
Most countries are planning to restart flights at much higher levels starting in May this year, easyJet said on Wednesday and added that it expected to increase flights to more countries from late May. The airline said that it expected to be able to fly flights and passengers at about 20 per cent of the total capacity of what it had done in 2019 on the overall during the quarter between the month of April to the end of June.
 
The finances of the airlines has been significantly hit by the near collapse of air travel during the Covid-19 pandemic as countries closed down borders to prevent the spread of the pandemic and the company now hopes that the return flying at larger scales will also help it to boost its pandemic-hit finances. In the period between October last year to end of March this year, the airline operated at only about 14 per cent of what it did in the same period a year ago, the airline said.
 
A loss before tax in the range of 690 million pounds ($950.41 million) to 730 million pounds is expected to be reported by the airline for the six months ended in March, the airline said, after it managed to implement much higher cost curtailment measures than was expected by the analysts according to their forecasts.
 
Currently the airline has a liquidity of 2.9 billion pounds and therefore was placed in a good position to make investments for flying more planes when there is a recovery in the airline industry, easyJet.
 
"We maintain significant flexibility to ramp capacity up or down quickly depending upon the unwinding of travel restrictions and expected demand across our European network," said easyJet in its statement.
 
Despite the roll of Covid-19 vaccines across all of the major countries of the world, the pace of inoculation in some of the markets has put a question mark over when there can be a proper resumption of international air travel.
 
Last week, the industry was disappointed with the announcement of plans of the United Kingdom government to kick off a summer getaway season, after the British government did not include a start date for the travel or provide a list of the countries that would be open to international travels.
 
(Source:www.nasdaq.com)