The airline will take delivery of its first Boeing 737 aircraft in March 2018 which it says will “significantly improve the underlying economics of the business” due to being more fuel efficient and requiring less maintenance.
It's going to take 3-5 years for the new fleet to bed in and before Monarch sees the gains of fuel efficiency and less maintenance. The fleet today is hardly what is considered to be "old".
The airline has decided to put all the fleet changeover costs into the accounts , hence the poor figures.
Equally, Grey Bull have termed the sale and leaseback of their new aircraft an "investment" and "cash injection". Compared to last year, all that has happened is Boeing have been guaranteed they won't have surplus 737-Max lying around. The market is saturated with Jet2 and Norwegian now flying to the same destinations that EasyJet stole almost a decade ago now. One of these legacy charters needs to be swallowed up in order to survive. Resistance is a bit futile.