Easyjet passenger growth picks up in March

8th Apr 2015 07:25

Budget airline Easyjet has reported a rise in annual passenger numbers and fuller planes for March.Passenger numbers, as measured by the number of earned seats flown, rose at a year-on-year rate of 7.5% last month to 5.49m, compared with the 6.1% growth seen in February.Given that Easyjet is a no-refund carrier, earned seats include tickets purchased regardless of whether or not the customer is a no-show on the day of the flight.The load factor for March, a key measure of how full airlines' planes are, improved by 1.1 percentage points (pp) over March 2014 to 92.6%.For the rolling 12 months ended March, passengers numbers were 6.7% higher year-on-year at 65.99m, while the load factor rose 1.4pp to 90.9%.