TWO OF Europe's biggest budget carriers will reveal their third quarter financial performances this week.

Investors in Easyjet and Wizz Air will be keenly focussed on whether the post-Covid boom in travel demand held up in the latter part of 2023, amid concern of a dropoff following the busy summer season.

Carriers across the board enjoyed a broadly stellar share price performance last year as droves of consumers opted for holidays after years of lockdown restrictions, despite the cost of living crisis.

But disruption throughout the second half has threatened to take the shine off the sector's great rebound.

Shares in a slew of airlines, including the two budget rivals, British Airways owner the IAG and Jet2, fell in October after the Israel-Gaza conflict caused a spike in global oil prices. That was despite upbeat financial results announcements and a record summer.

While the stocks have since regrouped, there are several recurring issues to add to the Middle East disruption, which are fueling some tepid reactions to results announcements.

Air traffic control disruption has continued across Europe and in the UK, following the National Air Traffic Service (NATs)' system-wide outage over the summer. Easyjet is particularly vulnerable to problems at its primary hub Gatwick, which has been plagued by air traffic issues in recent months and has had to cut flights due to French ATC walk-outs in the past. Wizz Air has underperformed most of its competition in recent months. It is still reeling from the fall-out of supply chain issues at its Pratt and Whitney GTF engines, which have forced it to slash second-half capacity forecasts by 10 per cent. Coming into the new year, December's passenger numbers were disappointing, with less carried than expected and a far lower load factor.

(c) 2024 City A.M., source Newspaper