I know Easyjet is a well run company and a lot of talented people do their
very best to keep aircraft as near full as possible. I do not wish to detract
from their achievement and efforts, but a load factor in Europe in February,
when the weather is awful and leisure demand to beaches is low, of over 90%
sounds suspiciously high and suggests the headline statistic may be hiding some
other story
I travel everywhere with easyJet on staff travel. This has been the most challenging winter to get seats at any time. I think it certainly is a true statistic and not too good to be true.
Take Belfast as an example. They have scaled back some route frequency London overall but more notably some of the Euro routes, couple that with Aer Lingus not being on these routes over winter e.g. ALC, goes from 5/6 a week down to 3, Malaga, similar.
In other markets they had reduced frequency, bmibaby is gone, Spanair is gone, Malev, airline closures, the market has been tighting up, hence easyJet seats more on demand. Also Ryanair reduction in fly programme assisting to some extent I would say in similar markets?
Carolyn has clearly said that staff travel availability would be down, and this is due to the demand they are seeing at the moment.
Furthermore, there is a lot of positivity around about easyJet and their addition of pre assigned seats etc. easyJet's strategy of modest growth and 'low' fares to convenient airports paying off so much so that they will be in FTE 100!!
EI-BUD