Founder of easyJet warns of airline running out of money

Monday, April 6, 2020

By August if an order for more than 100 new Airbus jets is not cancelled the founder of easyJet has warned that the airline will not run out of cash.

Although Stelios Haji-Ioannou who is not into an executive role but his family controls one-third of the carrier’s shares wants to remove Andrew Findlay, the chief financial officer.

The  main objective is to terminate the £4.5bn contract between easyJet and Airbus for 107 additional useless aircraft as mentioned  in an open letter from the businessman.

He went on saying further that if the £4.5 billion liability to Airbus is preserved – and not cancelled – by the easyJet board then, he will regret to report, easyJet will run out of money around August 2020, perhaps even earlier.

The airline has grounded its entire fleet throughout April and May in response to the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse in demand among passengers.

It is expected that flights in significant numbers will be resumed by June  but according to Sir Stelios restarting mass-air travel could be much longer. He said that almost every country in Europe has closed its borders to foreigners and nobody is aware when it will open.

When  it comes to any form of travel fear has taken over human behaviour and every country is trying to keep others out for much longer then the date their own local national lockdown ends.

He felt that the airline at the end of national lockdowns will feel more like a start-up trying to find a few profitable routes for a few aircraft at a time.

He presumes that not many Brits would want to fly to northern Italy or Spain on holiday this June or vice-versa.

Sir Stelios also criticised of the  forecast last week from Credit Suisse which states that  an “assumption that easyJet will fly all its current 330/350 aircraft to full capacity from October 2020 and earn higher profits in 2021 than it did in 2019”.

But according to him terminating the Airbus contract is the only chance current shareholders have to maintain any value in their shares.

Chances of thriving and surviving in the future will be more if easyJet terminates the Airbus contract and does not need loans from the U.K.

I order to oust Mr Findlay he was seeking support from other shareholders along with the non-executive director, Andreas Bierwirth.

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