Chief executive, Andy Harrison, said: ‘We are one of only a few airlines expecting to make a profit this year.
‘A critical part of our success has been optimising the allocation of our aircraft across our 19 European bases.
‘This means responding to airports with uncompetitive costs, as well as moving swiftly to seize opportunities as competitors retreat.’
Most of the freed-up aircraft will redeployed to easyJet’s continental European bases, with its overall growth plan remaining unchanged at about 7.5% per year over the medium term.
Luton is currently one of the airline’s biggest bases. It employs 530 pilots and cabin crew at the airport and flies 4.7m passengers a year on 16 aircraft.
However, easyJet said it was being forced to cut its operations due to ‘the airport’s failure to recognise the commercial realities of the recession’.
Airport costs at Luton have risen by 25% over the past three years, which makes the base no longer competitive, the airline added.
Negotiations with abertis, the Spanish operator of Luton, and its owner Luton Borough Council, which is understood to receive over half of the airport charges, have broken down, ‘leaving easyJet no alternative but to reallocate parts of its flying programme’.
At East Midlands, where it employs 120 staff and carries about 700k passengers annually, the airline’s operation has ‘remained stagnant’ with three aircraft for many years.
‘In regard to East Midlands we cannot see a growing long term future and we have decided to move our assets to markets with better long term potential,’ Harrison said.
easyJet has opened a formal 90-day consultation with its crew at Luton and East Midlands.
In addition, it will consult on a staff reduction at Belfast, Bristol, Newcastle and Stansted airports, affecting about 40 pilot and cabin crew jobs.
However, the airline said there were sufficient opportunities within its network for all affected employees, and that it intended to redeploy as many as possible.
Harrison added that the situation at both Luton and East Midlands had been exacerbated by the rise in Airport Passenger Duty.
‘APD in its current form is particularly damaging to regional airports which do not benefit from transfer passengers for whom APD is not applicable,’ he said.
‘easyJet regrets the Government’s decision to backtrack on the reform of APD which would have made it an emissions-based tax rather than simply a blunt holiday tax.’
Separately, the airline announced it carried 4.8m passengers last month, 4.7% more than in August 2008. Load factor improved by 0.5 percentage points to 91.8%.
In the 12 months ended 31 August 2009, easyJet's passenger numbers rose by 4.8% to 44.94m, while load factor was 1.4pp higher at 85.4%.
See also:
Jet2.com creates 250 jobs at East Midlands (28/08/2009)
Expanding easyJet targets £25m-£50m FY profit (29/07/2009)
Ryanair switches aircraft to cheaper Canaries (29/07/2009)
Airports urged to cut fees (22/07/2009)
APD hike threatens jobs and economy (25/06/2009)