Perfect! Listen, good morning, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us here today as we are to discuss the easyJet's performance in the first half, and then also go through a little bit about more specifically how we're progressing towards our medium-term targets as well. With me, as usual, is Kenton Jarvis, our CFO, and I'm going to come back to that, by the way. And also the eminent team of colleagues that I have with me here from the whole of the airline Management Board as well, and then, of course, also our Chairman, Sir Stephen Hester, who is here. As we always do here, we're going to leave plenty of time for questions after we've gone through the presentation.
Do take the opportunity, and feel free to ask any of my colleagues if there's anything you would like to talk to anyone here individually about as well. So you should have been sent the slides alongside with the announcement that we released earlier this morning as well, and as usual, all the material is available also on our corporate website. I'm going to start off by giving you a little bit of a performance snapshot of where we stand. Kenton is going to go through the numbers in more details, and then we're going to do this deep dive, and then talk about how we're progressing towards the midterm targets, and then finish off on the kind of an outlook and a summary.
But before we do that, I'm just going to draw your attention to another announcement that we did this morning, and that is that I will be retiring from easyJet here in early 2025. Now, this is very much an, you know, orderly and a seamless transition, and by that time, I would have been in the company here for over seven years as well. And I'm super excited about the fact that the board and that Stephen has appointed, after a thorough process, Kenton to be the next CEO, taking over after me. And I'm going to hand over also to Kenton to tell you all how much you're going to miss me. But the key thing is in here to say that this is still in the early 2025.
We are all focused, and so is everyone here, you know, to really perform and deliver on what we believe is going to be another record summer, and then also land all the initiatives here in the summer and the fall that are going to take us on towards our midterm targets and, and beyond as well. That is the key thing, and that is what we are focusing on as well. But on that note, Kenton.
Thank you, Johan. Thank you. Well, I've worked with Johan for, and had the pleasure of working with him for a number of years now. So therefore he's right, it will be sad when he comes-
But not so sad.
Quite sad, when he comes to retire, at the start of next year. But that said, I'm absolutely delighted to have been appointed by the board as the next CEO for easyJet. I've got a huge belief in easyJet, and I'll be very proud to take on the role. It is a privilege to lead a fantastic company like easyJet, along with a very talented and experienced Management Board, and I look forward to that. I think one important thing to say is, since I joined easyJet in early 2021, I've led the strategy function as part of my responsibilities as CFO, and therefore, along with the Management Board and actually the wider kind of leadership team, have helped co-create the strategy we now have, and also its implementation.
So I think it's fair to say that I am completely committed to that strategy. I believe it is the right strategy, and I remain confident, as does the management team here, that we will deliver on those medium-term targets that we set out in October. But as Johan said, he'll be leading the company for the rest of the summer. So now the announcement's made, we'll look to move on with the search for my successor. And then in the meantime, we'll focus on delivering what is going to be a good summer, and also for me to focus on what is my current role, that of the CFO. And I'm going to take the opportunity to spend more time out in the business and the wider network, to speak and visit with more colleagues.
But let's get back to the matter in hand, and our progress towards H1 and, and this year. Yeah.
Listen, let's go on to the next slide and talk a little bit about, you know, what we have seen, you know, here in the winter and what we can expect out of this year as well. So you would have seen from the numbers that we managed to reduce the winter loss by GBP 61 million, and that is, you know, clearly despite the conflict that we've seen in the Middle East that is still ongoing, but also supported, I should say, also on a strong Easter. Upgauging is on track. We're probably the only airline, I'd say, in Europe who are getting aircraft deliveries here. 16 A320 aircraft coming into that, which means that the upgauging plans that we have to continue to remove the 319s here in the next five years is still on track.
easyJet Holidays, Garry Wilson, has had a very strong performance in the first half, 31 million in profit, and we're now with 77% sold of the planned program within holidays. We expect this to deliver more than GBP 170 million of profit to the group. Capacity growth that we've seen in the winter of the 12%, that remains on track for the summer. So we're looking at approximately around 8%, which is going to give us then, you know, around that 100 million of seats for the full year as well. So all in all, together with what I'm going to talk you through when we're going through the strategic initiatives, means that we're well on track and progressing towards our medium-term targets.
That means building on the record summer that we had in 2023. It also means that we expect to see strong earnings growth in the full year. So I'll come back to those things a little bit more in detail on the initiatives, but I hand over to you now to go through the numbers.
Thank you. Thanks, Johan. So if we begin with Slide 4, outlining the key performance indicators for the half. Financially, H1 was a good first step towards the medium-term target of structurally reducing our winter losses, driven by targeted capacity growth where demand was strongest. Total capacity rose by 12% compared to the first half last year, totaling 42.3 million seats, and passenger numbers increased by 11%. We saw strong pricing across the half, with airline revenue per seat increasing 5% year-on-year to GBP 69.87. In line with our guidance, it was good to see cost per seat ex-fuel remain flat for the first half, as we continue to manage our cost base within the current inflationary environment.
The average sector length saw a 2% decline year-on-year, due to the impact of removing planned capacity into Israel, Jordan and Egypt. These longer sector routes were redeployed onto shorter routes, which limited the cost per seat impact, but did impact the CASK performance. CASK ex-fuel increased 2% year-on-year. easyJet Holidays continued its strong performance with a growth in profit of 210%, driven by an increase in customers of 42% year-on-year. As a result of this performance, the group's loss before tax per seat improved 24% year-on-year. Now, turning on to Slide 5 and the income statement. Passenger revenue increased 17%, while ancillary revenue increased 19% year-on-year. Demand remained strong through the period, with some benefit also realized by the early timing of Easter.
Fuel costs increased by 18% to just over GBP 900 million, driven by an increase in capacity and a 6% rise in fuel cost per seat. easyJet generated a positive EBITDA through the winter of GBP 15 million. Progress towards our medium-term target of structurally reducing winter losses was highlighted with a GBP 61 million improvement year-on-year, despite the GBP 40 million direct impact from the conflict in the Middle East, but benefiting from an early Easter. We remain focused on making a profit in the December quarter and minimizing the losses that all airlines make through the March quarter. The group headline loss before tax for H1 was GBP 350 million, compared to GBP 411 million in the prior year. Now, moving on to the revenue per seat bridge on Slide 6.
The total airline revenue per seat increased 5%, both at constant currency and at a reported currency. Ticket yield increased by 5% year-on-year, driven by easyJet's targeted network growth, route maturity and strong demand. Airline ancillary yield increased by 7% as a result of increased uptake of our ancillary product offering, alongside pricing enhancements from our improved algorithms. Compared to revenue per seat, RASK increased 7% in the half due to the 2% reduction in sector length. Now, let's move on to the cost per seat bridge on Slide 7. The headline cost per seat ex-fuel at constant currency for the half was reduced 0.8% year-on-year for the airline. Airport and ground handling charges saw an improvement of 11% year-on-year, due to a slight reduction in load factor, offsetting underlying inflation seen in regulated airports.
Crew costs increased by 52 pence per seat. We continue to support our crew, along with all of our colleagues, as they're critical to the successful execution of our strategy. Through the period, we've seen new labour deals being agreed, and these have been set to ensure our crew are competitively paid in all of our markets. We've also relaunched performance shares. This initiative makes all of our employees shareholders, giving them a vested interest in the future success of easyJet. Maintenance costs remain stable. We've now insourced all of our U.K. line and light base maintenance, with a growing proportion also insourced in the EU through the opening of our Berlin hangar. This has helped give certainty of supply while also generating cost efficiencies. And we've now agreed to deal to purchase our very first heavy maintenance facility, which is established already in Malta.
This facility will deliver further supply certainty, and we expect it to unlock cost benefits as it will serve around 25% of all our heavy maintenance requirements. Ownership costs decreased by £1.05 per seat, as the fixed costs were spread over a higher capacity. The scale benefit was coupled by a 7% improvement in aircraft utilization year-on-year. Productivity and utilization is expected to further improve into next winter as we continue to grow and scale our costs. Fuel increased by GBP 0.94 at constant currency. However, as we move into the summer, we no longer expect to see a fuel headwind year-on-year, despite the EU ETS free allowance unwind starting to come through.
Maintaining cost control in the current inflationary environment continues to be our focus, and I expect costs to be well controlled throughout the summer, with H2 CPS ex-fuel expected to be up low single digits. Moving on to Slide 8, and fuel and FX hedging. We've continued to build a strong hedge position, with 74% of our aviation fuel needs hedged at an average rate of $825 per metric ton for this summer. Our US dollar requirements are hedged to a level of 75%, now for the summer at a rate of 1.25, and US dollar lease payments are hedged for the next 3 years at a very favorable rate of 1.27. CapEx is also hedged for the next 12 months in the relevant underlying currency.
Carbon obligations, including free allowances, are fully covered for calendar year 2024 at EUR 43 per metric ton and 82% covered for calendar year 2025 at EUR 30 per metric ton. We continue to actively manage our exposure to carbon, as demonstrated by the coverage we're building for these years. Our continued fleet modernization and upgauging journey will help mitigate the impact of the EU ETS allowances being phased out. Now moving on to the cash flow bridge on Slide 9. During the first half of the year, our cash position increased by GBP 407 million, taking our cash and money market deposits balance to GBP 3.3 billion sterling.
We saw an inflow of almost GBP 400 million from financing activities, driven by the repayment of a EUR 500 million euro bond, which matured in October 2023, and an EUR 850 million euro bond, which was issued with a coupon of 3.75% on the 20 March. The latest bond matures in 2031. Our financing activities have allowed us to pre-fund the EUR 500 million euro bond, which matures in June 2025. In addition to our financing activities, we had a positive cash generation from operations before dividends and FX of GBP 79 million. As you can see on the chart, this cash generation is driven by the positive movement on forward bookings, reflected through unearned revenue increase, with capacity growth, increased pricing, and growth of easyJet holidays all contributing.
Included in CapEx are the delivery of nine A320neo family aircraft. These aircraft have been taken direct into ownership through cash payments and will further strengthen the balance sheet through the remainder of the year as we take the final seven deliveries into ownership. We will then look to build our liquidity reserves ahead of the ramp-up in aircraft deliveries coming in the next few years as we renew the fleet and benefit from upgauging and the resultant cost and sustainability benefits. We also paid a dividend in the period at a level of 10% of profit after tax for the 2023 financial year. We expect this to rise to 20% for the 2024 financial year. Now, moving on to slide 10 and the balance sheet.
Notable increases have been seen in our unearned revenue due to a higher level of forward bookings. You can also see an increase in our property, plant, and equipment, driven by the increase in fleet size to 343 aircraft from 328 aircraft at March 31, 2023. We've seen a GBP 140 million increase in our derivative financial instruments in the half, which reflects the positive hedging position we hold today versus the spot rate as at March 31, 2023. At the end of the first half, our net cash position was GBP 146 million, and this compares to a net debt position of GBP 156 million last year. If you remove the IFRS 16 lease liabilities, our net cash position would be GBP 1.2 billion.
We continue to hold investment-grade credit ratings with both Moody's, who are rated Baa2 with a stable outlook, and Standard & Poor's, rated BBB with a positive outlook. So turning on to slide 11 and a slide on our capital discipline. Making the highest return from the metal that we deploy is a primary focus for us. We're relentless on allocating aircraft to the highest-performing bases whilst maintaining an optimal network. We're seeing this come through in our financial performance, following the right sizing of Berlin and the continued improvement in Porto and Lisbon following the investments made there last year. Alongside our aircraft and having them in the right locations, I also want to drive revenue growth on our existing assets. easyJet Holidays, with its asset-light model, continues to drive additional returns for our fleet.
As we increase our market share in the U.K., we'll continue to see these returns come through as we take margin that historically third parties have made from flying on our aircraft. Both ticket and ancillary trends continue to be positive as we drive increased uptake on our ancillary products, as well as ongoing pricing improvements for our algorithms. As we invest in new capital over the coming years to deliver on our growth targets, we're going to be disciplined with how we allocate those aircraft. We will grow within our network through increasing frequencies or adding network points into existing bases. For example, Cape Verde, which we've recently launched from Porto, providing more choice for our customers. Upgauging will provide further growth on our existing routes without any additional frequencies, while providing cost and sustainability benefits through reduced fuel burn and lower noise pollution.
As we bring new aircraft into the fleet, we'll also see our ownership costs reduce due to our attractive pricing with Airbus and the fact that the new aircraft do not have their engine shop visits capitalized until they're incurred. Slide 12 shows the flexibility we maintain when it comes to growing our fleet, which are all Airbus A320 family aircraft powered by CFM engines. The orange line through the middle shows our current base fleet plan for the next 4 years, aiming to grow to a fleet of 384 aircraft by full year 2027. We now have an order book for 306 A320neo family aircraft, delivering up to full year 2034, with a further 100 purchase rights on top of this.
These deliveries will drive our upgauging story as we move from our current average gauge of 180 into the low 190s by 2028 and then into the low 200s by 2033. The industry is facing supply constraints from both OEMs struggling to meet their delivery schedules. easyJet continues to expect all 16 aircraft deliveries this year and is unaffected by the GTF challenges as we continue to operate a 100% CFM engine-powered fleet. We retain good flexibility to mitigate the notified slippages from Airbus in 2025 due to the A319 fleet we have in service today. Moving on to gross CapEx projections on Slide 13. We expect our gross CapEx expenditure to rise over the next three years, reflecting an increase in our scheduled aircraft deliveries.
This increase is also driven by the step-up in pre-delivery payments in line with our delivery profile, increased investment into spares to ensure operational readiness, and maintenance cost growth as the fleet expands. All the aircraft deliveries in 2024 and 2025 are expected to be taken direct into ownership, and this will take our neo ownership percentage to 81%. It's important to note that the CapEx shown in this slide is the gross CapEx position, and doesn't account for any potential sale and leaseback proceeds. We currently have 53% of total fleet in ownership, with 77% when it comes to the neo subfleet. The neo aircraft are our primary focus, as this is where the real value lies.
As set out in the capital allocation framework, we're looking to maintain the proportion of neos we have in ownership at greater than 75% going forward. To help give some context on what the net CapEx could look like for, say, full year 2026, if we were to take 75% of the 25 deliveries into ownership that year, the net CapEx would reduce from GBP 1.9 billion down to GBP 1.6 billion. If we were to reset our total neo ownership back to 75%, the net CapEx would then further drop to GBP 1.4 billion.
If, however, we were to take all the full year 2026 deliveries through cash, then the full year net 2027 net CapEx could reduce from GBP 2.4 billion to GBP 2 billion if we took 75% of those in that year into ownership, and would further reduce to GBP 1.6 billion, if again, we reset our total neo ownership back to 75%. You can see on the slide that we have a number of options open to us when it comes to financing the fleet, and I'll be hosting a session on this on the 20 of June. So please reach out to Adrian if you would like to attend that session. I'll now pass the back to Johan.
Perfect. Thank you very much for that, Kenton. So, I'm going to move on to this slide, and I know that this might be a little bit repetitive for you because we have shown this to you, I think, you know, for a very long period of time. But it is important to know that this is our strategy. This is the plan that really guides everything we're doing. This is how we're allocating our funds. This is how we're allocating our top people to get on to the initiatives that we know is the platform to progress towards the next set of the medium targets we have. Continue to expand the presence at the primary airports, really continuing the transformation of the revenue, including holidays, and then also delivering great customer service and really capitalize on the low-cost model.
That means we can give attractive fares to customers, but at the same time, also deliver strong shareholder returns and, and earnings on that. But as you know, with strategies, they are, you know, something that can be put, as it used to be, on a piece of paper, now in a document, but it has to be delivered by people. It has to be delivered by people. If you're turning on the next slide, I'm just going to talk you through a little bit of the things that we're seeing when it comes to this organization, which I am immensely proud about.
Now, we know that we have committed people, we know that we have passionate people, and it is important not only because it's the right thing to do, but when you are fighting for top talent, when you are fighting where there is shortage of, or, or market of, of capabilities, this really matters. So we're spending a lot of time to be an attractive employer. And if you're looking at some of the data's in here as well, in the U.K., ranked as the number one company when it comes both for airlines and travel on Glassdoor, as an example. easyJet and the holidays and, and Garry's business was, was ranked as the number one company among Best Places to Work in the Sunday Times here. It was on Sunday they came out with that.
You won it also last year, but then you were in the smaller companies division. Now, you move up to the big companies division as well. But, you know, it's just examples on the fact that, look, this is an attractive place to work and to be in. And the good thing about that is, of course, also it helps attrition. So when you're getting that top talents come in, you also get the chance and you stay good opportunities to keep them, and that attracts more people as well. We've done a lot on the crew, focused a lot on the engagement, particularly at the local places, at the bases, because we know that that matters the most for our frontline crew.
Multiple courses and training courses when it comes to health and well-being and mental health awareness, also when we're looking at inclusion as well. We have also invested GBP 8 million in a performance share plan for employees. So now all employees of easyJet is also shareholders, which we believe is the right thing to do because it really incentivizes the same behaviors as it is for other larger shareholders as well. We really think that this makes a positive difference for the performance of the company. Now, if you then go on to the next slide, looking at how we're now progressing towards the medium-term target that we set out to you here in the fall, I think it was September?
October.
October. And just to show you and demonstrate, you know, the progress that's been made for, you know, the first half of the first year, and then also what we can expect from this year. You would have known that the profit we had per seat was equivalent to just about coming up to GBP 5. And with the principles that we laid out, where we saw they had the opportunities to reach a new target, which is GBP 7-GBP 10 pounds profit per seat, we can see that reducing the winter losses that we had done on the GBP 61 million represents about 40p on that.
We then had the upgauging, which is something that we will measure over clearly the medium-term targets, and, and that comes into play when you're looking at the all A319s will be leaving the fleet here within 5 years, and we're on track to do also that. And that represents in itself, as we talked about before, a cost saving that is pretty unique to us of some GBP 3. We then seen also then holidays, which the, the expectation to do GBP 170 million and above that, will represent about 50p on that. And then you have some other initiatives, in-flight retail, which I will talk about, and then also the maturity we see on the network that really brings also the benefits on this.
So you take that into consideration, and you can say that after the first half of the first year of the medium-term plan, is that we're looking to be in over and above that GBP 1 in that year to get on to that seven and the ten pounds. So we're well progressing towards that, and that you know, to constantly and consistently deliver over GBP 1 billion of profit for the whole of the group. So if you then do a little bit more of a deep dive into this on the strategy, building and continue to increase our presence at the primary airports in Europe. Let's just do a little bit of an update on that. 158 new routes that have been, you know, announced and delivered for this financial year that we are in.
A couple of highlights on that, the new bases that we launched here in terms of Birmingham and Alicante is all delivering actually over and above what we thought it was going to do. Load factor is actually above on both those two bases, the average of the whole of the network, and we continue to see also then further improvements to come from them. Today, we also announced the investment and the starting of our tenth base here in the U.K., Southend. And you would have known that, you know, we closed this base at the early start of the pandemic, which was more about, at that point in time, you know, right-sizing, you know, the network to where we were. But we have seen a huge, you know, improvement in the flying that we do into Southend.
So we see that there is a strong demand from that base, and I think also with the, the easyJet holiday business now, it changes also the opportunity that we have overall, because it's a big catchment area for, for holidays, that we can provide now, in addition to the airline with the easyJet holidays. So we're really confident about that base. Continue to do more work on the network to reduce the winter losses. We're adding 35% in the coming winter into the North Africa region. We're launching Cape Verde as an example, that we all know that these destinations, including Cape Verde, is a healthy and a positive contributor further to reduce the winter losses, as that is a part, a big part of our plans to, to hit that over GBP 1 billion and above.
And we continue to see the maturity of the network that we have, and we talked about before, Berlin, as an example. Italy is improving, and when you're looking through the investment we've done in Porto and Lisbon, as an example, we expect that to deliver over 25% in profit improvement also in summer 2024 to what we saw in 2023. Coming on to the revenue side as well, and you should take the opportunity to ask Sophie more about this on the Q&A, because we actually have loads of initiatives within this area. But I'm going to highlight two of those as well. I know you've had, you know, separate sessions with Garry, most of you, where we talk about the holidays as well. But, you know, we now sold 77% of the planned program that we have.
And not only do we get the demand coming in there, we do get the margins coming in there, we do get the customer satisfactions coming in there, and in terms of likely to rebook, I don't think that I have ever seen such high scores as well. This is a very unique model. I was asked about this earlier in the media call: "Well, you know, why can't somebody else do that?" Well, there's a couple of things in here. One, it builds on a network that is pretty unique. We are Europe's largest airline from the primary airport to these destinations that holiday makers go to. That was there even before we had the holidays part of it. The trust in the brand is pretty unique among low-cost airlines, never to mention others.
And that gives us that, you know, opportunity to easily transform customers who are going on a low-cost flight and then transfer to them into accommodation, that most of the time are in the four- and the five-star areas, and then also executed exceptionally well by a team that is in there. So clearly, over GBP 170 million is what we're expecting on the way towards that GBP 250 million, but I can assure you that the internal targets that we have for that goes way beyond the GBP 250 million. In-flight retail is an interesting one. We had about, prior to the, in 2019, I think we had about 35-40p that we saw that this was delivering for us well.
We changed the model, and we talked about the model, how we're now contracting directly with the suppliers onto this, and we changed the whole way on how we're using data to better accommodate and localize, actually, the suppliers towards the amounts we're seeing. For this winter, as an example, we've seen a profit uptake about 40%, which means we're going to move this up, we expect for the full year financial, about GBP 0.70 of what the contribution is going to be about this. And there's more things to come from this. Spend per seat, profit per seat, and conversion is all up, and we're still in the middle of that journey to really hit that GBP 1 and perhaps even below, go above from that.
Looking at ease and reliability, so we've taken a lot of actions and invested a lot of time and effort into really driving a strong on-time performance. And we started really well here in the early part of the season in April, with actually on-time performance being on the first wave, which is so critical, higher than it was actually back in 2019. And the reason why the first wave is important, because you might think, well, you know, all airlines would do that, but we actually have seen, because when you have congestions and when you have crunch points across the network, which we ultimately know is going to be there any summer, you have to try to get away on time.
And we've been using quite a lot of data to analyze also what this mean for the schedule, that we are simulating different on-time performance. And I come on and talk about that when I go to the next slide, so we can work out how we can deliver a great experience also then for our customers. We're using a lot of data, we're using a lot of automation, also from how we're engaging with our customers. We have 67% of all our customer queries now are done via live chat. That's close to 50% opting from when this was at this time point in time last year.
When you're looking at automation of the communication channels, so that would be things like what we do on social media, what we do on email, as an example, we see an increased productivity also of 46%, and the customer service aspect of that has actually gone up 17%. So lower cost for the company and a better customer experience, and that is something that we continue to look now as we kind of move in a lot more also on how we personalize this better. So we're working with some of the world's leading experts and companies and partnering up with on how we can take this to the next stage.
So this is here gonna continue to generate a better digitally and seamless experience for our customer, where self-service will really be at the heart of it, that for our passengers and our customers. Continue to capitalize on the low-cost model that we have, extraordinarily important. Now, working on the cost and the cost discipline, you know, doesn't sit just with one department, it sits with all of us as well. But I must say, Kenton has done a tremendous job since he joined, to bring transparency, to bring clarity, to bring discipline in this as well, and I think you will see that when you're looking at the cost performance we've had recently and what we expect also then to have going forward.
That is really helping us to make sure we can deliver the attractiveness of the fares, but at the same time, deliver also the earnings that we, we think we can do to, to give strong shareholder value. This winter was very much about targeted growth. We know that just throwing on capacity, hoping for the best, that's not the way to do it. It can easily go wrong in the winters if you do that. We have analyzed very clearly where we think and when we know we're getting contributions from what we have, over and above the variable cost, so it contributes towards the fixed cost in, in the winter. We're gonna continue to do that through better productivity and utilization as we also then go forward into the next winter. We have then actions that we laid out earlier.
There are annualising, there are more things coming into the pipelines, as we may mean we're gonna have, you know, we believe quite a good, and healthy cost journey here, particularly against competitors versus others. We are in the process waiting for competition approvals on a purchase of SR Technics in Malta. This means that we're gonna do, we reckon, about 25% of the heavy base maintenance on the fleet done in this area. That gives us greater certainty to perform that, and it also gives us cost benefits going forward. And then what I mentioned earlier as well, some of the tools we're using within the company, and Sophie's and David's team, is to really looking at things on how we can optimize the schedules.
We have something called SkySyms, which is literally an OTP simulator that we're using. We're using something called SkyMax, as an example. We have the Atlas project, which really dives deeper into, say, what parameters, not only OTP, but also the expected yield and the revenue that we can get out and simulate that in beforehand before we finalize also the schedules going forward. And not only does this build, you know, as on, on historical performance, but also anticipated changes that will be in network that has to do with, you know, predicted capacity changes from competitors, as an example. So we really can try to optimize that.
And as far as we can tell, when we look at the reporting, you know, we seem in the latest reporting to be able to widen the cost advantage we have against the legacy airlines as well, and starting to reduce some of that when it comes to some others and really seem to be fighting the inflation better than others. And that's something that we are very mindful that we want to continue that trajectory, and we do think we have more opportunities to come also in this area. So this will then lead us to look at the outlook and the summary. Q3 RPS, we believe is gonna be slightly up year-over-year.
In Q4, we say that yields are slightly up, and we're also then looking for the RPS, as you-- sorry, the load factor in the quarter is about 1 percentage point ahead of where we stand. Cost, we talked about. Capacity growth is on track, about that approximately 8% as well. And because we have sold 77% now of the planned program within easyJet Holidays, we expect that to deliver over and above the GBP 170 million that we're talking about here. So clear strategy, disciplined capital allocation framework that we've gone through with you before as well, means that we are progressing well towards those medium-term targets, and to deliver a great platform to drive, you know, strong shareholder value going forward. So I'm gonna stop there, and we'll do some Q and As.
Hi, morning. It's James Hollins from BNP Paribas. Three from me, please. First one, congratulations, Kenton Jarvis, fully, fully deserved.
Thank you, James.
Straight into a hedge fund question. Are you—relative to where we saw your update about a month ago, maybe just clarify, have you seen any softening in pricing for the summer? Second one is on, I think, for you as well. Just those Airbus deliveries, if we look at your midterm target, this is a longer-term question, you'll be thankful. If you look at your midterm targets, the biggest chunk, I think, is from upgauge, and clearly, Airbus are screwing you, or whatever you want to call it, for—with their deliveries in full year 2025. Just wondering how much that changes the dynamics of delivering on your midterm targets, because clearly—Well, I assume that upgauge from those low deliveries is clearly going to come through more slowly.
And thirdly, I can never not ask a question for Garry, who seems to be the best boss in the U.K., if Sunday Times is anything to go by. Say something to aspire to, Kenton. Back to where I was. Any surprising booking trends in the holiday space? I think we've heard from a number of operators really around, you know, some changes in how various U.K. demographics are booking. Maybe talk about demographics, regions, and any sort of update on any surprising booking trends now you're 77% sold. Thank you.
I'll start on the pricing for this summer as well, and you do the Airbus one, and then the best boss in the U.K.. will surely want to say something about that as well to help out. But look, you know, I think we've been pretty consistent in the way we've been talking about the pricing. You know, we said we'd be well ahead, you know, on it, and now we're getting closer to, you know, to the quarters, and of course, things will then tighten up. We're 77% sold for the Q1. And then also when it comes to the Q4, you know, the thing is we're sold 39%. There's still a lot left to sell, but we're ahead on load factors, and we're ahead on the yield.
Remember here, we got an 8%, you know, capacity growth in here. So we got to take that into consideration as well. So I think it's absolutely, you know, consistent where we have been. It's too early to call what this will be because there's simply the nature of the capacities left to sell, not only with us, but also on the market. And it will continue to be something, you know, we're gonna work extremely hard on to do. But overall, the demand is positive. We've seen the momentum into this.
We have, you know, over 1 million more passengers booked than we had at this point in time last year, which is a result, obviously, than about, you know, you know, keeping that load factor over and above where we were last year and the growth that we have. So I don't think we've seen any big shifts either, either way on this, and I think it's, you know, pretty, pretty consistent where we've been.
Yeah, and I'd just like to add, I mean, add to that. Because of the capacity growth, what that means in reality is Q4 clearly our most profitable quarter in the entire year. We've taken 9% more bookings for Q4. We've got load factor ahead, we've got ticket yield slightly up. We didn't say, but ancillary yield also slightly up. So we are seeing positive momentum for Q4, and that's a pretty solid set of numbers. Airbus and upgauging, I mean, we're very pleased to be getting the 16 aircraft that were slated to be got this year. In fact, they're coming in a month or two early. We got another 4 last month, so we'll have them all by the start of the summer, which is what we wanted by the start of peak summer.
Next year, we will be getting 9 aircraft, and we'll be covering that shortfall with the A319 to maintain ourselves on the base plan. But as we look and talk with Airbus, and we talk frequently with Airbus, we're confident that that shortfall gets recovered quite quickly over the next few years. So when we look at our medium-term targets, or we look, in fact, at our five-year plan, we still anticipate all of our A319s being retired at the end of that plan. And that's where the majority of the upgauging benefit comes from because it's removing those 156-seat aircraft and replacing them with far more fuel-efficient, larger aircraft.
Garry?
Thanks for the... Yeah, thanks for the question, James. I did ask the team to carry me in in a sedan chair this morning, but they told me to do one, so. No, on the holiday surprises, I mean, I think, I think because we are still young, we're kind of really getting to understand how the customers are buying our holidays. And I think one of the pleasant surprises this year for us is that in the earliest market, we will follow the traditional curve of, you know, very, very high sales in January that will then level off as we get into February and March. But what we're also finding is we get an extra boost in the kind of super late market.
So that's six weeks out, where the airline is typically getting a lot of customers onto the site looking. We're seeing quite a bit of conversion there, and some of the traditional players would find that quite difficult to pick up because it's not really an area that holidaymakers look at. It's very, very late for holidaymakers. So I think we do particularly well there, and that's been pleasantly surprising to us, and that continues at the moment. I think the other area that's been kind of not surprising but proven is that business model piece, where the really highly demanded destinations we will sell very early on. And what we're finding now in the kind of six weeks out is where hoteliers are starting to reduce their prices 'cause they've got occupancy of what have you.
We're able to pick up a lot of that market as well. So whereas somewhere like, say, Greece and Turkey did really well for us in January, we're now finding places like Tunisia and Egypt, where hoteliers are taking prices down because of the availability, are really starting to come to the fore. So I think that plays with that model of not having fixed capacity in any one destination. We can pick up, you know, where the, where the kind of elasticity is in terms of the pricing, which has been really good for us.
Good, good morning, it's Jarrod Castle from UBS, and congrats on the, on the changes. Just firstly, I mean, you know, we've seen a lot of stuff still about consumer pressures, and, you know, more so actually coming out of the US now. Do you think, you know, and especially on the hotel side, actually, I mean, do you still think it's possible to, you know, with cost inflation, to keep passing it on to your customers and, you know, your, your ability to grow your margin? So, so that's the first one. Secondly, just looking at package holidays again, can you give an idea in terms of, you know, how, how you're selling by source market?
You know, I think there's two, the U.K. and Switzerland, but just kind of how the selling is going in each market. And then thirdly, just looking more longer term, you've obviously got a lot of planes, 300-400 coming. And, you know, you pride yourselves on kind of dominating slot-constrained airports. So, you know, how are you going to put those in airports which are already slot constrained? I mean, there is a, I guess, in the appendix, you know, kind of a nice table, but is there room to kind of deploy that capacity, or are we going to see kind of more planes going to less constrained airports? Thanks.
Yeah, I think, look, I mean, when you're looking at the customer, I think on one hand, you're looking at the pressures that, you know, is on households and the discretionary income is there. But when you take all of that into consideration, interest rates here and the inflation as well, what we're seeing is also that a lot of the increases we've seen has actually been offset by the fact that this is something that consumers prioritize more. So there's a, there's a, I think, more of an equation of the fact that travel and holidays are getting a larger share of that wallet. We always felt, and we always see that when it becomes pressure on households and the consumers in U.K. and Europe, that people will gravitate towards value.
You know, people will gravitate towards the brands that they trust to make sure they get the absolute utmost out of what we're offering. And that is something that I think is a very strong, you know, protection against the other things that, you know, might work against that. So we will certainly look to pass on the cost increases that we have. But on the other hand as well, we're having things like the ancillaries that is delivering for us. We have things like we can do that is not really related to that in terms of increasing the productivity and utilization. We talked about the winter being one example on that.
So there's a whole range of things that we can do that isn't just entirely based on the fact that we just need to put a big, you know, price out there on, on the fares and, and hope it's going to work for us. We still have plenty of opportunities to, to go at and to do things just to become, you know, more efficient and better and more sophisticated, how we're using data, how we're automating. I show you some examples in there as well. So that's, that's the reason why these initiatives that we're doing, that is around these four strategic areas, is, is really coming to the, to the fore. I, I think, there's going to be a lot of...
I'm not going to give you the mic all the time, but in terms of looking at the holiday business, I think it's very clear that, you know, the holiday business will predominantly be focused and the results will come out of the U.K.. But as we have launched, you know, Switzerland and Germany and France as well, we see that we do well in those markets. I think particularly France has been, you know, stepping up really to it, and it's been really well received there as well.
What it helps Gary to do is obviously, it helps him also when he negotiates with the hoteliers, to also them, you know, say that, "You know, I'm representing more markets," because there are hoteliers who wants to have distribution really in more markets than only the U.K..
Yeah, I mean, and on the aircraft and where we put them, you can see from the fleet plan, we've got 343 today. We're growing that to 390, say, by the end of the five years. There's two things to think about here. The growth of just over 5% per annum, in part, comes from upgauging and replacing those 100 A319s. So that's a big part of that story, and therefore, we don't need any more slots to do that. We don't need any more routes or any more frequencies. The other thing you can see is we keep finding opportunities. So Birmingham was launched at the start of this summer, hugely successful. Really successful start with Birmingham, underpinned by the success of the holidays business. We're looking to launch Southend.
We're seeing lots of opportunities in destination bases. We get an arbitrage on the costs when it comes to costs, and also we can fly back into those slot-constrained airports when they're not actually slot constrained. So you can't get a first wave slot for love or money at Gatwick, but if you're flying back in at eleven o'clock, you'll find slots. So if you're coming back from those destination bases, that really works, but you can only do that if you already have a really good presence in those primary airports. So you're well known, and there's no more incremental marketing costs. So as we look through our network plans, and trust me, Sophie and the team look through them in huge detail, we see plenty of opportunities. We see plenty of opportunities.
Morning, it's Jamie Rowbotham from Deutsche Bank. Two from me that potentially follow on nicely, and maybe Sophie might care to comment on these. The first one, when Ryanair announced back in March that they'd only have 40 Maxs this summer instead of 57, they said they'd make schedule cuts as a result at some of their higher-cost airports, and they mentioned Milan Malpensa and 4 Portuguese airports. Given your ability to link up, you know, to link up other primary airports like Gatwick to those primary airports, is that something you've been able to take advantage of, do you think? And secondly, also looking at competition, Transavia's point-to-point leisure routes out of Paris or Lille seem to be maturing nicely.
I just wondered how you perceive the competitive dynamics currently for easyJet in France?
Yeah.
... great questions. In terms of what we're seeing in terms of market capacity, I think it's fair also to reflect that although Ryanair are not getting the 57, they are still getting 40 aircraft. They are still growing this summer, so I think we can't kind of be too naive to think that they're not gonna be growing on some of our markets as well. In terms of those opportunities, I mean, what we are seeing, it's interesting. So they're adding 8.9 million seats this summer overall. 1 million is on routes that are head-to-head with us. 2.4 million are on routes that we could access, but we don't currently operate, but 5.5 million are on routes that we wouldn't even operate at either end of those routes.
So, so actually, you know, they are still growing, but most of that isn't on our capacity. In terms of kind of individual opportunities, yes, I mean, we will absolutely take those. From where we were at the end of September to where we are now at the ninth of April, taking OAG data, we've added 3.1 million seats into H2. So yes, we, we will constantly look at those opportunities. I mean, some of that also, not the Ryanair specifically, but looking at where we've taken capacity out of Tel Aviv, actually, we've been able to add more seats into the rest of the network because those were quite long sectors. So we will actually be bigger as a result of the reductions that we've made into H2.
But yeah, of course, if there's any great opportunities there, we will, we will be taking them. In terms of, in terms of Paris and in terms of France, we're definitely seeing some improvements there. I mean, it was interesting, you know, some of the movements that we're seeing and hearing in terms of base closures from competitors potentially, later this year as well, are great opportunities for us. And we will continue to, to retain the strength we've got in France. We also, obviously, have the benefit of operating inbound into France, from the, the rest of the network, and we are growing from the U.K. into France, as we head into the summer and into autumn as well. So, yes, those are, those are good opportunities.
Interestingly, you know, Air France, Transavia have removed 6 head-to-heads with us in the French regions for this summer. We're seeing Volotea have taken out another 6 routes that are head-to-head as well. So we are seeing quite a bit of, of kind of, reduction in head-to-head capacity in France, in particular. And, and if we're looking into Italy and overall, with Wizz, they've dropped 26 head-to-head routes with us this financial year so far, so our market overlap has reduced by 30%, with them. So, so yes, it is a positive environment for us to continue to grow in, in those primary airports.
Hello? Can you hear me?
We can probably hear you, Harry.
Hello? Okay, good. It's Harry Gowers from J.P. Morgan. Two questions, if I can. I think there was some news this week that your latest pay offer to the U.K pilots had been, I think you said, narrowly rejected. So maybe just how far apart are you there? Is it just on pay? And then what's the potential financial impact on that? You know, how much is incremental to your planning already? And then the second one was on holidays, the PBT upgrade to GBP 170 million. I don't think the customer growth guidance had been, has been changed much, so maybe just what's driving the upgrade there, and is there more room to go on that over the next couple of months over summer? Thanks.
Yeah. So, we clearly disappointed that the negotiations that we had with BALPA didn't receive a positive vote, but you should know that it was a 56% vote against it, so it's very narrow by any standards on that. And I think that, you know, we are offering competitive pay, and we believe it is a good competitive package for our pilots, and it was, like I said, a close vote on that, and now we're engaging back again with BALPA. I think that they are gonna do clearly some work first to try to understand this, because this was actually were supported by the local council on there.
We just, you know, stay very close to them and negotiate constructively with them to get that in place. So, you know, that is something that we take into consideration, what the deals are. We anticipate what they will be, and they would all be part of our cost projections as we go forward as well.
Yeah, on the holidays, clearly the margin is slightly higher than the volumes. That's clearly that number there were 35%, I think, on volume, 40% on margin. And I think six months ago, I talked about the dynamic inventory links we were having with the hotels, where we would have direct access into their inventory. That's starting to pay quite good dividends for us. So we've got all room types available right up to the last minute, and we're seeing that we're able to get quite decent margin from them quite late, and also just that late jump that I talked about earlier, that's going at quite good margin as well. So we're quite pleased with how that's developing.
That's what's driving the difference between the 35% volume and the 40% margin.
Hi, hi, it's Andrew from Barclays. Kenton, congratulations on your new gig. It sounds interesting. And Johan, also congratulations because I think the fact that the board has chosen to appoint Kenton an internal candidate, you know, makes him a continuity candidate, and there can be no greater compliment to what you've done with the business than them wanting to do that. So congrats to you as well. Questions. If I can come back to James' first one and just try to get a bit more clarity on how you're seeing the unit revenues progress in the summer. I think when you talk to the market about unit revenues, of course, you don't know how it's going to absolutely land because the late bookings are the most valuable, and they can swing around.
But can you perhaps describe how you were seeing what's on the books?... and how that compares with what your expectation is at the end, at the moment. Just because I think that's the way that we can get confused. And then can I ask about Jet2's entry into Liverpool? And have you noticed that adding any pressure to Gary's mighty empire or indeed, you know, Sophie's, you know, the performance of the airline out of there? And have you seen anything that resonates with, you know, what Jet2 said about softness in April and May?
Yeah. So on Jet2, no, we continue to see a, you know, a good performance in there. It is a good base for us, and I do think it's when you're looking at the, you know, when you're competing against other airlines, I mean, you, Liverpool, as you know, Andrew, you know, we're, I think we have a market share of, you know, 45-
Forty-five
... or something like that as well, and Ryanair has been big, and we've been coexisting. Because we actually don't fly to the same places, coming back to the point about, you know, the primary network advantage of doing so. But I do think also that, you know, the value that we provide and can do that means that we can, you know, easily continue to see this as a very strong performing base and coexist with competitors. We can compete with anyone, anywhere where we fly, where we choose to go as well. So we haven't seen anything that has really impacted that as well. On the yield, Andrew, I mean, and coming back to what we've said, I think it is pretty, you know, consistent with what we have seen.
We don't see that there are any big changes coming in here, here and there. We see that there is a positive, you know, pretty steady demand that is in there. But, but it will be difficult to estimate, you know, how much capacity is left to the market, what is the lease market is gonna do, how much new market, how much are people waiting to then go and take a bet, depending on, you know, whether it's raining down here in the, in, in the U.K. and what the situation is elsewhere. So that is always the case for the, for the summers. There is this level of, of uncertainty that we have to live with, and I think it...
When you only book 39% in the quarter here, it is difficult to make another, you know, set of judgment than apart from the guidance we provided.
Yeah, and I'd kind of add for the color on the April softness. I don't really think that would have surprised anyone. When Easter moves early, April always becomes a softer month. It's a therefore a long month without any bank holidays. But what we're seeing, and included in the guidance of still being slightly up for Q3, despite the April softness, is that we're growing the capacity by 8%. We're seeing a strength in May and June that overturn the absence of Easter in April, and that again is not uncommon. You often have a good May after an early Easter, and then people looking to come back and travel again through the bank holidays and the May period.
You know, I think it's what we expect really as we move through Q3, but it's great to see the extra capacity we've put on is being taken up.
Thank you. It's Ruairi Cullinane from RBC. The first question follows up on the capacity backdrop. It all sounded quite positive, but I wondered if any routes looked incrementally less constrained, perhaps as a result of capacity redeployed from Middle Eastern routes. And then, secondly, perhaps you could provide some detail on the contribution of holidays towards the working capital of the business, and particularly the growth of unearned revenue, and if you are looking at any metrics any differently as a result of the growing holidays business. Thank you.
I think, I mean, if you're looking through the network, you know, we're looking, and when we're allocating aircraft and when we do, you know, looking at our pricing and opportunities, very much coming down to what Sophie said, the head-to-head capacity increase. We do have seen clearly the trend that, you know, legacies and flags has to a number of degrees, you know, following on from the recovery of the pandemic, has retrenched because the metal and the capacity is gone. I think we saw that there was a shift into certain markets, obviously, where Italy, as you would know, was heavily, heavily competed between, you know, the low-cost airlines.
We've seen, as Sophie pointed out, now that the dynamics have changed slightly, which means that you're seeing quite a, you know, a substantial profit improvement in those places where it actually was tough. So we should remind ourselves on that. I think that the, you know, the this constraint that exists among some of the airlines because of whether that is, you know, the Pratt issue or the Boeing issue, means that they need to be much more careful how they're allocating that capacity. So we see some has gone even further out east, some has gone, as you know, Abu Dhabi, whatever have you, and that has kind of eases up some of that competitive pressure. But at the same time, you know, it it's quite a dynamic picture.
But I would say that the constraint has meant that the business be in a different and slightly, you know, perhaps better competitive environment in some of these areas that we have. But that's why it's important for us that we continue to build those presence at these constrained airport, because once you have them, you have them. And that's what is so brilliant about the application that we have ahead of ourselves that is unique to us, really, that we can, as Kenton pointed out, just go from 319s to the 320s to the 321s and to build on that presence.
...On the working yeah, so on the working capital, I mean, yes, holidays provides a very good working capital inflow for the business. We obviously get a deposit from the customers at the time of booking, which I would have to say is a very reasonable market-leadingly low deposit, so that's good. And then a balance prior to departure, where then from the holidays business, you tend to pay the hoteliers after the customer stayed in resort. So it's a very positive working capital benefit that that's part of the reason our unearned revenues is driven up by over 10% year-on-year. But, you know, we it's really the balance payments that come in because it's a very attractive deposit that we offer to our customers on holidays.
Hi, it's Conor Gaynor from Bloomberg Intelligence. So, I just wondered if you could comment a bit more on the relative demand between, say, beach, city and business. I realize we're entering a very leisure-heavy part of the year, but perhaps see how that feeds into your yield performance, too. And then the second one, bit of a holidays one as well. We've seen Ryanair formalize more deals with tour operators and OTAs. So does that impact the competitive dynamics at all for you? Thank you.
Yeah, I think as you know, we've seen that the beach capacities and demand has, you know, been the one who's been driving really the recovery that we've seen, and we've seen that it was a slower growth coming into the city and then also business. On business travel, we're actually not far off now when we were in 2019. I think when I'm reading what flags and legacies are saying about the business, that they now don't expect it to come back to that extent. And we're almost there or thereabout, because our focus has been, as you know, on the SMEs. They don't have the travel restrictions in the same way. And then also, you know, more physical business travel, we actually have to go to power plant, we have to do things.
I think city's been the one who's been slower to recover or in line with the business travel, but that is starting to come back as well. So, you know, while we see the changes we've done in the mix, in the overall program, you would have seen that it is more beach now that is there, but we're seeing a pickup also on the city side now.
Yeah, I mean, to add to that, our mix of business in full year 2019, we had something like 53% of our business was on cities. So of our network was on cities, and that dropped to 47% last year. The really pleasing thing is from 2023 to 2024, we're going to be growing our capacity by 9%, but cities has held that 47% mix. So you can see that the demand's starting to come back into cities. Now, obviously, beach beach destinations have gone from 21% to 27% now. So it's an important part of our network. But it-- but what's really healthy is beach are fighting for a greater share. Cities are now fighting for a greater share.
We're expanding in non-EU, so, you know, it's almost back to the potential on growth. It, the demands are coming back nicely.
Yes, sir.
Yeah, just on the Ryanair piece, I mean, it's nothing's changed. I mean, they were scraping before, they now have a deal with them. And so if you sell seats to third parties, that still continues. As far as we're concerned, it's BAU, and we're certainly not seeing any impact of it.
Yeah.
Tobias Fromme from Bernstein. ESG is not the most popular topic currently among investors, but I know you gave a workshop last year on SAF, and given that you're more exposed than your competitors, especially to the free allowances, I was wondering how your strategy, the execution of your strategy is going in that regard, and whether you see any challenges with delayed aircraft deliveries.
Sorry, I didn't catch it. On-
On ESG.
On ESG, right. I mean, look, first of all, if you're looking at the whole plan we have, and I'll take the, you know, roadmap to net zero, which consists of very different things in there, SAFs being one of them as well. You know, we have flexibility within these levers in order to do that. I think in all fairness, I think, you know, we have a SAF supply that question that is clearly out there, as you know. The biofuels that are in play right now are probably going to run out by 2037 and 2038, so the need to move on to the next generation of the so-called e-fuels as well.
Hydrogen will take a longer period of time, as you know, but it's only anticipated at the very end of our roadmap to net zero, and there will be a whole other range of things we can continue to do to decarbonize. But remember this, you know, the fleet order that we just announced here in December, that's going to take us from the 29-34. I mean, we're going to continue also just on the investment we're doing with all the new aircraft that we are now taking into consideration. That's going to drive very nicely into the line of reduction of the carbon intensity we have. We have a lot of operational things and improvements we can still do. The descent profile optimization that we talked about as an example.
So I think from an ESG point of view, and we look at the environment, we have, you know, continuous, you know, progress we can do on that. And the ratings we've seen, the CDP ratings, with A- that we achieved here recently, I think it speaks also, you know, something about the initiatives that we have. And it's not like we've run out of options in here on what we can do going forward.
Make this one the final question.
Thanks very much. Gerald Khoo from Liberum. Two, if I can, both related to holidays. Firstly, when you talk about holidays, and to the extent you all... Well, I think the number was 77%. You talk about 77% of the planned capacity or the planned program... How much flexibility do you have on that planned program up and down? And at what point does that flexibility drop away? Are you still able, if the demand was there, to add to the program, for example? And secondly, in relation to forward bookings on the airline as a whole, to what extent is that better, that slightly better performance driven by the, you know, the growth of holidays and the sort of earlier booking profile of the holidays business?
I can do the last part, and Garry can talk about that as well. Look, I mean, it's clearly part we do, but remember that this is still a relatively small proportion still in terms of the capacities and the seats available for the airline. So, you know, this is an overall positive demand that we're seeing. I think what this is doing, this model allows us to convert people who are flying with easyJet but wants accommodation. That's the beauty of this model as well. So this is actually, you know, not to say that, well, you know, we're not picking up anything else apart from the holiday. That's not correct at all. And we talked about the recovery into the city as an example, and it's still a relatively small part of the program.
Yeah, and on the flexibility, I mean, yeah, there is no fixed capacity, and there's no fixed capacity on the beds either. So the answer, Gerard, is we can go up and down as we choose. I mean, obviously, 77% sold sounds fantastic from an airline perspective, but from a tour ops perspective, you'd expect to be kind of 70+ at this point. Anyway, we can flex that up if we see there is demand, but we work on a cost-plus model. So what we won't do is go in really heavy to compete with a lot of the traditional operators who will be really ramping prices down to try to fill spare capacity.
On that cost-plus, we'll maintain the margins, but absolutely we can follow with the demand and where it is, and that's not fixed.
And to put it into context, Gerard, we did 1.9 million customers with easyJet Holidays last year. We're looking to grow that to 2.6. So if they consume 5.2 million seats, that's on a 100 million seats for the airline. So it's, it's an important growth, but it's not everything for Sophie.
All right. Listen, thank you so much for joining us here today as well. I hope to see you on board an easyJet flight again. If not, we'll do it at the next update. Thank you so much for coming, yeah.
Thank you.