EasyJet Says High Crew Absence Not Yet Improving

EasyJet said it was yet to see an easing of crew sickness that is causing it to cancel flights and disrupt the Easter plans of thousands of travellers, but it was confident it would be able to return to a near pre-pandemic schedule this summer.

The British low-cost carrier had no option but to preemptively cancel hundreds of flights in recent days as COVID-related crew absences reached 20% at some of its bases, Chief Executive Johan Lundgren told reporters on Tuesday.

"You would expect that the spike that we're seeing in COVID infections that really exists here in the UK and also in parts of the network is going to come down, but this is something that we don't see yet," he said.

"And (until) that moment in time, we'll just continue to monitor the situation."

The airline has flown 94% of its planned schedule in the last seven days, and Lundgren said daily cancellations were currently about 4% of flights, with the majority of customers able to rebook for the same day.

He said easyJet was flying around a quarter of a million customers each day over Easter on up to 1,600 daily flights, the highest number operated since 2019.

The carrier expects to operate about 90% of its pre-pandemic schedule in the April-June quarter, Lundgren said, and to return to near-2019 levels this summer, for which it was seeing strong customer demand.

"We are not worried to that extent for the summer and the things that sit inside our control, we have the crew in place," he said.

Lundgren said despite COVID-19 and rising fuel prices, easyJet had outperformed expectations in the six months to the end of March, and would report a loss before tax of between 535 million and 565 million pounds ($696 million-735 million) for the period.

For the same period last year the carrier reported a headline loss before tax of 701 million pounds.

Shares in easyJet, which have fallen 31% in the last 12 months, were trading down 1.5% in early deals.

($1 = 0.7689 pounds)