I agree. It's a very decent result with pax up 3.7%.
The impact of an earlier Easter is difficult to judge although it presumably will have boosted outbound MAN originating pax. Those returning pax will count in April. I tend to look at March & April combined when the timing of Easter partially falls in different months from one year to the next.
In the press release, it's encouraging that the CEO seems confident we'll see growth in pax numbers this year, bearing in mind the start of summer ACL report was a very marginal increase in seats. Of course, Oct-Dec won't be adversely affected by MON's demise which should make for a positive impact as the immediate response by other carriers in 2017 was very limited, especially if we see some new routes next winter.
It's also a good point about the impact of the loss of MON compared to XL. The latter was a blow from which it took longer to recover, but the timing in 2008 was at the height of the financial crisis as I recall.