The airline's latest full-year results show headline profit before tax rising 9% to £665m, its third consecutive year of earnings growth. The engine of that improvement was easyJet holidays, which delivered £250m in profit: hitting its medium-term target ahead of schedule and now aims for £450m by 2030. The core airline, by contrast, posted a slightly lower profit of £415m as winter performance and route maturity proved slower to improve than hoped.
A business of two speeds
The divergence between the businesses is striking. Holidays revenue jumped 27%, buoyed by a 20% rise in customers and higher average selling prices. The unit has taken UK market share from 7% to 10%, helped by expanding its hotel range and venturing into new products, including a luxury offering. Customer satisfaction stands at a healthy 83%. The strength of the package-holiday division increasingly provides ballast to a business that once rose and fell on the volatility of short-haul air travel.
The airline segment, meanwhile, expanded capacity by 4% and increased total available seat-kilometres (ASKs) by 9% thanks to longer routes. Yet the same shift diluted revenue per kilometre: RASK fell 3%, pressured further by winter competition and capacity diverted from Tel Aviv. Costs were more helpful: non-fuel CASK fell 1%, thanks to tighter operations, better utilisation and fewer disruption expenses. Fuel CASK improved 7%, helped by a growing share of newer, more efficient aircraft. Even so, inflation in navigation, wages and maintenance kept overall cost discipline a slog.
Modernising the fleet, broadening the network
Operational performance was a bright spot. On-time performance rose three percentage points to 72%, and customer satisfaction climbed to its highest level in a decade. Investments in resilience—more crew, tighter turnaround times and predictive modelling—appear to be paying off. easyJet also opened new bases in Milan Linate, Rome Fiumicino and London Southend, while closing weaker ones in Toulouse and Venice. The strategy is a familiar one: prune, then redeploy aircraft where returns are higher.
Source: easyJet
The fleet plan remains ambitious. Seventeen new A320neo aircraft are due next year, followed by 30 in 2027 and 43 in 2028, allowing the carrier to retire older A319s and lift average seating capacity. The airline ended the year with net cash of £602m—up from £181m—supporting a proposed dividend worth 20% of headline earnings.
For the year ahead, management expects ASK growth of 7%, modest cost inflation and strong early bookings: 81% of the first quarter is already sold. The airline is still some way from its aspiration of more than £1bn in annual profit, but the mix of improving operations, a stronger balance sheet and a flourishing holidays unit suggests that easyJet, after years of turbulence, is finally cruising at a more stable altitude.
