Airline Jet2 sees pickup but many delay bookings until late summer

Uncertainty threatening hopes for bumper peak season

Jet2 said bookings for winter and summer next year were encouraging.

Airline Jet2 said bookings for winter and summer next year were encouraging but it had less visibility on immediate travel as passengers delay holidays amid the uncertainty, threatening hopes for a bumper peak season.

The comments come as large corporate giants around the world, including BP, international banking giant HSBC, and delivery service UPS posted bumper profits as they tapped recovery in their respective markets after the Covid-19 crisis.                            

Airlines and travel firms were among the worst hit and Jet2 has already cancelled holidays until June 24, hoping that by that time it will have more clarity from the UK government on where people can go.

Another UK-based travel firm, Thomas Cook, which sells holidays online, said that 30% of its total bookings were for September and October, a much higher proportion than it would expect for those months, as people are more confident they will be able to travel then.

Leeds, northern England-based Jet2 said that for the 12 months ended March 2021, it would report a loss of between £375m to £385m (€442m). 

It has liquidity of over £1bn and could survive for around 15 months without flying.

Meanwhile, BP has reported its biggest quarterly profit since the Covid pandemic began, and will hand investors a $500m (€413m) cash windfall, as the global oil markets recover from the crisis.

The oil company reported a profit of $3.3bn for the first quarter, up sharply from a loss of $628m in the same period last year when oil prices began to slide in line with China’s economic slowdown.

Global oil prices fell from an average of just over $61.60 a barrel in January last year to an average of $21.40 a barrel in April 2020. 

Over the first quarter of 2021, the average price of Brent crude has returned to almost $60 a barrel and is expected to bolster the fortunes of the world’s biggest oil companies. 

Brent was trading at $66 on Tuesday morning.

Parcel delivery giant UPS has posted a jump in revenues, as the pandemic continues to drive demand for home deliveries.

United Parcel Service’s revenues rose 27% year-on-year to $22.91bn in the last quarter, ahead of expectations of $20.49bn. 

That shows that the boom in online shopping remains strong, with people ordering more goods while they’re working from home and some shops remained closed. 

And banking giant HSBC reported $5.8bn in first-quarter profit, a near-80% jump, as improving economic forecasts allowed the bank to release hundreds of millions of bad debt provisions made to cover potential defaults linked to the Covid crisis.