Travel company giant TUI said an exceptional number of holiday bookings would help offset the impact of the Boeing 737 Max grounding on its annual profit, enabling it to lift the bottom end of annual earnings guidance.
TUI is benefiting from the failure of rival travel company Thomas Cook last September, helping it to pick up new customers and gain market share, but at the same time it faces headwinds from the Max grounding as it has to pay to lease other planes.
The company said for the 12 months to the end of September, it now expected underlying core earnings to be in the range of €850m to €1.05bn.
It had warned as recently as December that Max costs could drag annual earnings down to €680m in a worse-case scenario.
TUI said the UK recorded its best ever January in booking terms.
