Johan Lundgren: ‘I get upset when people say we should just stop flying’
The clouds are lifting for travel and aviation as it looks forward to the first half-term for two years free of most Covid shackles. Bookings have boomed since the decision that travel testing would end – and easyJet, the airline that carries the most UK passengers, has just welcomed staff who were working remotely back to the Luton hangar that serves as head office.
If optimism is growing that business could return to pre-pandemic levels by summer, easyJet’s chief executive, Johan Lundgren, is clear that the crisis is not yet done.
Short-haul and leisure travel, easyJet’s market, will come back quickest, he says – but this is only the recovery phase of the pandemic after a long time in survival mode. “You have to remind yourself that we were grounded for 11 weeks and didn’t know when we would restart operations.”
Asked whether we will see more variants, he says: “I’m sure we will. I don’t think we can call it over.”
But he certainly believes that testing should be a thing of the past. Having had to track diverging Covid policy across Europe over two years, he says: “It’s been extraordinary sometimes.”
Between the EU’s introduction of digital Covid passports last May and the onset of the Omicron variant, for example, he says, most European countries were open to vaccinated travellers: “No testing, no quarantine. The UK was
Age 55
Family Married with twins, a boy and girl, now at university: “They came together, and they left together.”
Education Left school in Sweden at 16 to study classical trombone; business development courses in Stockholm and Lausanne; and a series of mentors – “getting people I can learn a lot from to share thoughts and experiences”.
Pay £740,000 including bonuses; no bonus taken since 2019.
Last holiday Skii
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