Easyjet appoints new finance chief as it expects major capacity drop

Budget airline EasyJet has announced that Tui executive Kenton Jarvis will become the company’s chief financial officer.

He will succeed Andrew Findlay, who declared his intention to leave after surviving an attempted boardroom coup earlier in the year by the Luton-based airline’s founder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

No start date has been given for Jarvis’ tenure, though Findlay has said he will leave the company once his contract expires in May 2021.

Jarvis is currently the chief executive of Aviation at Tui Group, having formerly been the finance director of the now-defunct travel operator, Airtours Holidays. He has also worked for Adidas and as a chartered accountant at PwC.

Easyjet said Jarvis had ‘proven his ability to drive savings and successful turnaround programmes’ while working at Tui and that this experience was ‘critical’ as the airline recovers from the harm caused by recent travel restrictions.

The airline’s chairman John Barton described him as a man of ‘high calibre’ who brings ‘vast industry experience’ and ‘highly relevant skills to the role, which will prove crucial in the coming months and beyond.’

The announcement comes ten days after the airline said it expected to be flying at 40 per cent of its planned capacity between September and November and cancelled flights to seven Greek islands due to the imposition of quarantine rules.

Easyjet’s passenger numbers have already fallen off a cliff this year due to the temporary grounding of all its flights from March 30 to mid-June. They then restarted at a much-reduced capacity.

In its most recent quarterly update, it revealed that only 709 flights took off in the three months to the end of June, compared to over 165,000 in the same period in 2019. Group turnover also plummeted from £1.76billion to £7million.

Chief executive Johan Lundgren has called on the government to give targeted support to the airline sector, which has been devastated this year by travel restrictions designed to contain the coronavirus.

The Swedish businessman wrote an article for the Daily Mail last week urging the government to implement numerous measures to try and revive the ailing British airline sector.

He called for a winter furlough scheme for airline workers, the abolition of air passenger duty tax for the coming year, and a more intelligent testing regime that ensures travellers coming from coronavirus ‘red zones’ are checked.

‘Airlines have had to raise funding, much of it debt of some form, which means they are mortgaging their futures to survive today.

‘This is going to hold back the UK’s economic recovery and make it increasingly reliant on foreign airlines. I can’t see why the government wants this.’

The financial impact of the pandemic has forced the firm to announce that up to 4,500 jobs – around 30 per cent of its total workforce – would be slashed to save money.

Pilots’ union Balpa called the company’s move an ‘ill-considered knee-jerk reaction.’ The organisation later accused EasyJet of trying to use pilots’ sickness records as an excuse to make them redundant.

It stated the move was ‘completely unacceptable in a safety-critical industry where pilots are legally required not to go to work if they are unfit to do so.

‘Retrospectively punishing these pilots for being sick or unfit to fly is outrageous and could significantly harm easyJet’s previously successful and well-regarded flight safety culture.’

Shares in EasyJet were down 7.9 per cent to £5.47 during the late morning.