The airline has time to act, and a reasonable base from which to assemble a self-help package
How bad are things at easyJet? Well, the backward-looking numbers are dreadful, obviously. An airline that has previously always made annual profits now expects a “headline” loss of £815m-£845m in the financial year to September, even before counting the whack from bad fuel hedges and redundancy and restructuring costs.
Yet it’s the forward-looking indicators that matter now, and easyJet is sending confused signals. The only simple part to understand was the familiar call by the chief executive, Johan Lundgren, for the government to “step up with a bespoke package of measures” for the aviation industry. He has a point: it’s shocking that it was only this week that ministers announced a “travel task force” to construct a decent Covid-testing system at airports.
