Buoyant customer demand helps leisure travel group Jet2's half year profits take off

Jet2, which has a large base at Leeds Bradford Aiport, has announced its unaudited interim results for the half year ended September 30 2022.

Despite “a difficult return to normal operations”, group profit before foreign exchange revaluation and taxation increased to £505.0m, compared with a loss of £195.1m the previous year, which was also 44 per cent ahead of the 2019 pre-Covid performance.

Total profit for the period after taxation was £356.0m. Seat capacity increased 14 per cent against summer 2019 and “buoyant customer demand” resulted in the business achieving an average load factor of 90.7 per cent.

The statement added: “Our operations were directly impacted by the broader disruption seen across the aviation sector and its supply

chains in mid-summer as was widely reported in the media, which has resulted in significant delay and compensation costs in excess of £50.0m.

"In mid-October 2022, we were delighted to announce that we had entered into an agreement to purchase a further 35 new firm ordered Airbus A320/A321 neo aircraft with the ability to extend up to 71 aircraft. “With its previous orders, the group now has a total of 98 firm ordered Airbus A320/A321 neo aircraft, which could eventually extend up to 146 aircraft, and critically has certainty of supply well into the next decade.

"With winter 2022/23 bookings encouraging and pricing remaining robust, but recognising that the important post-Christmas booking period is still to come, we are presently on track to exceed current average market expectations for group profit before FX revaluation and taxation for the year ending March 31 2023.”

Looking ahead, Jet2 said it faces input cost pressures including fuel, carbon, a strengthened US dollar and wage increases, plus investment to ensure staff can thrive and have a balanced lifestyle.

The statement added: “This leads us to conclude that margins may come under some pressure.”

"Our well-established truly variable duration holidays and wide ranging

product portfolio will provide customers with plenty of choice and flexibility to be able to tailor their holiday plans to meet their individual budgets. As a result, we remain confident that our customers’ eagerness to take their much valued and anticipated holidays will remain high.”

Jet2holidays is the UK's largest package holidays provider to many Mediterranean and Canary Islands leisure destinations and Jet2.com is the UK's third largest airline by number of passengers flown.

Jet2 operates from 10 bases across the UK; London Stansted, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, East Midlands, Leeds Bradford, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle and Belfast International.

The statement to accompany the results said: “The business made considerable investment well ahead of Summer 2022, retaining over 8,000 loyal colleagues throughout the pandemic and significantly topping up the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme funding on a sliding scale basis up to 100 per cent of salary for the lowest paid, recruiting and training seasonal colleagues in good time, making substantial marketing investments, plus early and meaningful salary increases for all colleagues.

"This left us very well prepared for our summer operation and also enabled Jet2.com to earn the accolade of being the only UK airline not to cancel a flight during July and August 2022,according to leading travel intelligence company, OAG.”