easyJet May passenger numbers up 3.7%

Budget airline easyJet said May passenger numbers rose 3.7% year-on-year to 7.5m.

Load factor, a measure of capacity utilisation, increased by 1.8 percentage points to 93.3%. That took the rolling 12-month passenger figure to 83.09m, an increase of 8.4% over the year to May 2017.

There were 974 cancellations in May 2018 - equivalent to 2.5% of planned capacity and up on the 117 experienced in May 2017. Around 600 were due to French and Italian industrial action with a further 300 arising from adverse weather conditions and ATC restrictions.