Business passengers lift easyJet sales

The airline said revenues for the three months to the end of June grew 23.2 per cent to £935m, boosted by growing passenger and ancillary revenues.

The budget carrier, which last year launched an initiative to lure more corporate passengers, said the number of business travellers flying with easyJet had jumped a fifth during the quarter and that the outlook was positive.

“Against the backdrop of high fuel prices and an uncertain economic environment, the strength of easyJet’s trading demonstrates it is well placed to succeed,” easyJet chief executive Carolyn McCall said in a statement.

“We expect at current fuel and exchange rates to deliver a pre-tax profit for the year ended September 30 of between £200m and £230m assuming normal conditions and a return on capital employed for the year of between 10 per cent and 12 per cent.”

The company is expected to report an annual pretax profit of between £160m and £268m, with the average at £183.8m.

EasyJet said it carried 14.4 million passengers during the quarter, 17.3 per cent more than the same period a year ago. Its load factor - a measure of how well it fills planes - edged up by 0.2 percentage points to 86.3 per cent. It added that it had already sold around three-quarters of seats for summer flights.

Earlier this month easyJet’s largest shareholder, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, said he wants to force a shareholder vote over the airline’s plans to by new aircraft from Airbus, resuming a long-running dispute with the company he founded.