Almost million more fly easyJet

Sep 6 2008 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

NO-FRILLS airline easyJet says it carried nearly 900,000 more passengers in August than a year ago.

The Luton group’s planes flew 4.59 million customers during the month, an increase of 24% after it benefited from its recent acquisition of GB Airways from British Airways, as well as promotions and sales.

EasyJet’s planes were also fuller, with its load factor up 4% to 91.3%. This contrasts with British Airways, which reported a 2.7% decline in load factor for August. EasyJet carried out heavy promotional activity last June and July with up to 20% off two million seats.

This also gave a slight boost to August’s figures, but most of the sales are aimed at boosting traffic in the autumn.

The airline is being hit by high oil prices and the company has warned annual profits could be as much as 42% lower than last year as it is faced with an increase of £185m in its annual fuel bill. It hopes to offset more than 50% of the price rises through revenue growth and cost savings and has vowed to be relentless in addressing costs and efficiency.

The company is planning to cut capacity by 12% at Stansted this winter to focus on Gatwick and the GB Airways business.

This week the carrier launched a route to Istanbul, bringing the total number of routes from Gatwick to 51 this winter. It is the fifth route to be added to the airline’s Gatwick base and it expects more than 100,000 passengers to use the new service in the first 12 months.

The announcement also means that easyJet has 400 routes on sale across its network.

Over the past 12 months, easyJet has flown 42.9 million passengers at an average load factor of 83.9%. Ryanair carried 55 million, filling 81% of its seats.