A summer of strikes for Irish budget airline Ryanair is one of the factors cited as helping Easyjet boost profits up by 41% for the year to September.
Strong summer sales and a clear strategy for all BREXIT scenarios also helped the airlines pre-tax profits top £578m.
Looking forward to next year the company said it had already seen strong sales with almost half of its available seats already booked for the first 6 months of 2019.
2018 has been a benchmark year for Easyjet with a huge investment being made at Berlin’s Tegel airport following its acquisition of parts of Air Berlin. In total it spent around £40m developing its network from the German capital.
It has also placed 115 of its Airbus aircraft onto a new company, Easyjet Europe. The airline created the Vienna based spin off as a safeguard in the event of a no-deal Brexit, although it is highly unlikely that aircraft will stop flying between Europe and the UK even in that scenario.
In line with profits, passenger numbers rose too with the airline carrying 88.5 million passengers this year, up 10.2% on the previous period.
