Berlin expansion delivers record passenger figures for easyJet as profits hit £445m

Budget carrier easyJet served a record number of passengers last year, with pre-tax profits up £60m.

The Luton-headquartered airline welcomed 88.5m travellers on its planes in the 12 months to September 30 2018, up year on year by 10.2%.

The uptick was partly attributed to easyJet’s primary airports strategy, which included expansion into Tegel Airport in Germany with the acquisition of part of Air Berlin’s operations.

easyJet completed the acquisition on December 15 for €40m, and while it made a total pre-tax loss of £152m on this side of the business, the figure was better than originally expected and operations at Tegel have since transitioned to business-as-usual, easyJet said.

Companywide, easyJet achieved a total pre-tax profit of £445m, up from £385m in 2016/17. Revenues for the period climbed to just under £5.9bn, compared with around £5.05bn the year previous.

Johan Lundgren, CEO of easyJet, said of the findings: “easyJet has delivered a great performance during the year, growing headline profit before tax by 41%, once again flying a record number of passengers at our highest ever annual load factor.

“The integration of new operations at Tegel has also progressed well and our brand consideration in Berlin has grown strongly.”

He added: “Our financial success and increasing customer loyalty demonstrate the resilience of our operations, the underlying strength of our business and our unrivalled customer experience.”