Easyjet’s first full year without a scramble at the boarding gates after it introduced allocated seating saw the budget carrier today enjoy a surge in revenues as the number of business travellers hit a record 12 million to last November.
Ticketed seating saw more suits, including MPs and bankers, switch from travelling with flag-bearing airlines to FTSE 100-listed easyJet, with the budget carrier flying 8.5% more business travellers in the first half of this year, ahead of overall passenger growth of 4%. Over the past four years, easyJet has ramped up its number of business fliers by 44%.
Chief executive Carolyn McCall told the BBC that allocated seating had been “the single most popular thing we have ever done for our customers. It’s definitely taken a barrier away from people who would never have tried us before, particularly business travellers.”
Its popularity helped revenues surge 6% to £1.7 billion, and the orange airline cut its dive into the red for the traditionally loss-making winter period to £53 million for the six months to end-March. That was lower than its £55 million to £65 million prediction, and beat City expectations.
The rise in ticket sales came despite the half-year period not including the benefit of the Easter holidays, which fell in April in 2014 but a month earlier in 2013.
As Heathrow and Gatwick set out their plans for runway expansion in the south-east to the Government’s Airports Commission, McCall warned the issue should not become a “political football”. She added: “There is a particular crunch in London that tends to be around Heathrow.”
The airline is planning on flying almost 7% more seats this summer, with about half already reserved. However, shares in easyJet sunk almost 4%, or 65.6p, to 1664.5p.
Gert Zonneveld, transport analyst at Panmure Gordon, said that was just a brief hiatus. “We remain hugely optimistic about the long-term prospects of this business,” he said.
