Annual General Meeting Statement
Summer 2024 on sale seat capacity at 17.17m seats is 12.4% higher than Summer 2023 and a slight increase on that reported at the time of our Preliminary Results on 11 July.
The months of July and August experienced strong late booking momentum with September currently showing a similar trend. As a result, average load factor is now 1.2ppts behind Summer 2023 at the same point (11 July 2024: 1.8ppts behind). Booked to date Package Holiday customers are up by 8%, representing 70.2% of total departing passengers, with Flight-Only passengers increasing by 17%. The continued demand momentum has served to offset softer flight-only net ticket yields, although package holiday pricing remains resilient and continues to show a modest increase on last year.
Winter 2024/25 forward bookings are encouraging with average load factor 0.8ppts ahead of Winter 2023/24 at the same point, against a 15.0% seat capacity increase to 5.14m seats. The package holiday mix is currently up by 1.9ppts with pricing at this early stage showing a modest increase for both our holiday products.
Year to date the business continues to trade in line with management’s expectations. However, given the late booking profile, the remaining summer months of September and October not yet complete, plus the majority of Winter 2024/25 seat capacity still to sell, it remains premature to provide definitive guidance as to Group profitability for the financial year ending 31 March 2025. Consequently, we will provide a further update at the interim results on 21 November 2024.
Looking forward, we continue to believe that Package Holidays are the Right Product for Price Conscious Customers. Our ability to offer a wide choice of quality product and the flexibility of truly variable duration holidays, makes it easy for our Customers to conveniently tailor their holiday plans to suit their individual budgets. Furthermore, all our Customers benefit from our commitment to quality reflected in our high trust ratings on Which?, TripAdvisor and Trustpilot, plus our recognition as the leading airline and holiday company on the UK Customer Satisfaction Index (UKCSI).
Summer 2025 is already on sale with growth in seat capacity of approximately 6.4% and average load factor at this very early stage slightly ahead of Summer 2024 at the same point.
For the long term our strategy remains consistent – To be the UK’s Leading and Best Leisure Travel Business – underpinned by our firm delivery stream of 146 Airbus A321neo through to 2035 which enables us to confidently plan for the future and with ‘People, Service, Profits’ serving as our guiding principles.