Easyjet passengers are shrugging off Brexit, with the budget carrier’s summer planes due to be fuller than they were this time last year.
Johan Lundgren, the chief executive, said: “Second-half bookings [are] ahead of last year.”
The load factor, which measures how many people are booked onto his planes for summer, is up 1%.
“We don’t see a specific negative impact,” from Brexit, Lundgren added. “Clearly the uncertainty is not helpful, but the environment we’re in is solid despite of it.”
Lundgren, who joked he’d seen “big traffic” between Brussels and London, said bookings for Brexit day, the 29 March, were in line with a year ago.
His comments came as easyJet’s revenues rose 13.7% to £1.3 billion for the last three months of 2018, as the airline checked in 15.1% more passengers, or 21.6 million.
It is pushing its travel brand easyJet Holidays: “We currently have half a million people booking accommodation with us, but about 20 million fliers,” Lundgren said.
“So 19.5 million are choosing to book accommodation elsewhere. We want a bigger slice of that pie.”
easyJet added that fares could be as much as 9% lower in the first half compared with a year ago. That is less an opportunity for passengers to scoop bargain breaks, and more because the pricier Easter period falls in its second half.
