EasyJet holidays made a £49m pre-tax profit in the last quarter, putting it on course to make £100m this financial year.

In its third quarter trading update issued this morning, easyJet said it total pre-tax profit for the three months to the end of June had improved by £317m year on year to £203m, due to strong demand.

It said it expects another ‘record performance’ up to the end of September, but warned that the whole industry faces a ‘challenging summer’.

“More constrained air space and flow rate restrictions are resulting in unprecedented ATC (air traffic control) disruption as well as increased ATC strike days up 40% year to date vs 2019,” it said.

Last week, the airline pro-actively cancelled 1,700 flights for the rest of this summer.

CEO Johan Lundgren said: “We are absolutely focused on mitigating the impact of the challenging external environment on our customers and flying them on their well-earned holidays.

“We continue to see good momentum as we move into Q4 where we will be operating over 160,000 flights and expect to deliver another record PBT performance.

“This winter we are adding more than 15% capacity and we see bookings ahead of the same period last year.”