Budget airline giant, easyJet said its Tegel Airport operations in Berling made headline losses to the tune of £115 million in its fourth quarter of 2018.
easyJet said it expects to have flown around 4.9 million seats during the financial year and load factors remain strong, at circa 85% for the fourth quarter, highlighting positive customer uptake. easyJet also expects a further reduction in non-headline costs for the year to circa £45 million.
easyJet’s expected total loss for Tegel operations has now improved to be in line with its original guidance of around £160 million.
Commenting, Johan Lundgren, easyJet Chief Executive said:
“easyJet expects to deliver a strong performance in both Q4 and the full year, driven by better-than-expected growth in passenger and ancillary revenues, as well as reduced losses at our Tegel operation. We now expect our headline profits for the year to be between £570m and £580m, at the top half of our guidance range. This has been achieved despite higher costs caused by disruption due to third party industrial action and severe weather. However, we have benefited from a number of one-off events in 2018, including the bankruptcies of Monarch and Air Berlin, as well as Ryanair cancellations.
“In the fourth quarter we made the decision to change our approach to technology development. Rather than a full replacement of our core commercial platform, we will be investing in better utilisation and development of existing systems on a modular basis. This has resulted in a non-headline charge of £65m as we repurpose our systems to create a better service for our customers.
“We look forward to FY 19 as we continue to invest in the long-term strategic initiatives that we set out at the half year.”
