Budget airline Wizz believes it lost between €632m and €652m in the last financial year.

It thinks it lost €190m to €210 in the last quarter alone.

But in a trading update this morning, it said it  had a ‘strong liquidity position’ with a total cash balance of €1.4bn at the end of March.

The airline said it is ‘on track to ramping up operations’ for a busy summer flying programme. It expects to operate 30% more capacity in April to June than in the same quarter of 2019 and over 40% more during the summer peak.

“We have been encouraged by demand trends in recent weeks and given the shorter booking horizon expect the bookings for this summer to build significantly after Easter,” it added.

“We continue to monitor the situation in Ukraine, Moldova and Russia and whilst our flights to/from these locations remain suspended we have successfully reallocated the affected capacity to other parts of our network.

“We have made several announcements of new aircraft allocations, additional routes and frequencies which will come into effect from this summer.”

The airline has hedged 36% of its jet fuel from April to August.

“During F23 our focus will be on maximising revenue and returning to productivity levels seen during the pre-COVID years, that should result in improved profitability during this period.,” it added.

Wizz Air will release audited results for the full year to the end of March on 8 June