LONDON, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) -- British low-cost airline easyJet announced 15 million-pound (19.36 million-U.S. dollar) loss caused by drone disruption at London's Gatwick Airport during Christmas last year, according to a company's statement issued Tuesday.
It said that the chaos made easyJet lose 5 million pounds revenues and 10 million pounds customer welfare costs, while 82,000 customers were affected and over 400 flights were cancelled.
Despite the negative impact caused by the drone incident, it still saw a good performance with robust customer demand in the quarter to Dec. 31, 2018.
Figures indicated that total revenue rose to 12.96 billion pounds, 13.7 percent higher than a year earlier. Meanwhile, passenger numbers reached 21.6 million during the period, up 15.1 percent.
Johan Lundgren, Chief Executive of easyJet, said: "easyJet has made a good start to the 2019 financial year with robust customer demand and ancillary sales, driving solid revenue generation."
Speaking of the disruption caused by the Gatwick drone sightings, he said "there has been a one-off cost impact from this incident, but underlying cost progress is in line with expectations".
For 2019, he added that "for the first half of 2019, booking levels currently remain encouraging despite the lack of certainty around Brexit for our customers. Second half bookings continue to be ahead of last year and our expectations for the full year headline profit before tax are broadly in line with current market expectations."
