Jet2’s ‘encouraging’ bookings after expected loss of £383m
JET2 is banking on a record summer after saying it expects to post a loss of up to £383million for the past year.
The airline and package break operator is laying on more flights this year than before the pandemic struck because of a bounceback in demand.
The holiday giant’s seat capacity is up 14 per cent on summer 2019. In a trading update yesterday, it said bookings were accelerating, with “customer confidence continuing to grow and pricing robust, as customers treat themselves to their longanticipated and welldeserved holidays”.
However, it follows a year in which the giant was again hit hard by Covid travel restrictions.
The removal of pre-departure tests for vaccinated people travelling to the UK, then no longer having to take a post-arrival lateral flow test, led to a “material” increase in trade earlier this year, Jet2 said.
Load factor – how full its planes flew – approached seasonal norms in February and March. But it followed a stop-start end to 2021, with the dropping of the Government’s Covid traffic-light system triggering a rise in bookings, then the emergence of the Omicron strain dampening demand.
Jet2 said the group still expects to report a loss for the Picture: PA year to the end of March of between £378million and £383million.
The company was started more than 30 years ago and flew its first leisure flight from Leeds Bradford Airport to Amsterdam in 2003.
Jet2.com is now Britain’s third-largest airline, flying from 10 UK airports to more than 60 destinations across Europe and beyond.
Jet2holidays is the country’s secondlargest package holiday operator.
The plc’s share price is down by more than a third from the peak it reached in February 2020, just before the Covid pandemic struck.
However, the shares were up more than four per cent in early afternoon trading yesterday.