Shares in easyJet, which have fallen 6 percent in the last three months, were up 5.1 percent at 383.40 pence by 1005 GMT, valuing the airline at around 1.9 billion pounds. During the quarter, easyJet took delivery of nine Airbus A319 aircraft and said it had sufficient resources to fund future plane deliveries through until June 2011.
"The underlying performance of the business in the first quarter has been encouraging and we are on track to deliver substantial profit improvement in 2010," said Chief Executive Andy Harrison, who is due to leave the company in June.
"EasyJet's pretax result in 2010 at current fuel prices and exchange rates is expected to benefit by around 60 million pounds in the first half and 100 million for the full year." The airline incurred 8 million pounds of additional operating costs from the snow and freezing weather which disrupted travel in Europe in recent weeks, and expects to take a similar hit in the second quarter.
EasyJet said it carried 11 million passengers in the quarter, up 9.1 percent compared with the same period last year, with 54 percent of customers coming from outside Britain. Its load factor - a measure of how full its planes were - grew 2.4 percentage points to 85.8 percent. "We expect capacity to grow by around 10 percent in the first half and in the full-year," Harrison said on an analyst call, adding that the airline was in the advanced stages of talks to appoint a new finance director.