EasyJet has reported a headline pre-tax loss of £394 million for the six months ending March, marking a slight improvement from the £350 million loss recorded in the same period last year. The airline attributes this marginal betterment, approximately £50 million, to the later timing of Easter this year, which has historically influenced seasonal demand for air travel. Despite the winter losses, the company remains optimistic about the upcoming summer season, traditionally a profitable period for airlines.

The carrier transported 18.2 million passengers in the first quarter, an 8% increase compared to the previous year, signaling a robust recovery in travel demand. Furthermore, EasyJet's package holiday division showcased a significant 42% year-on-year growth, with pre-tax profits reaching £44 million for the half-year. This performance underscores the airline's successful strategy to diversify its offerings and capture a larger share of the travel market.

Kenton Jarvis, EasyJet's chief executive, highlighted the airline's commitment to enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency as key drivers of its strategy. The announcement of a new base in Newcastle, set to open next spring, reflects EasyJet's ambition to expand its network and provide customers with more choices for flights and holidays across Europe and the UK.

Looking ahead, EasyJet is focused on achieving another record summer, with expectations of strong earnings growth. The airline's long-term goal of sustainably generating over £1 billion in annual pre-tax profit remains a central focus, as it continues to navigate the challenges and opportunities of the aviation industry.

A major outage at Amazon Web Services has disrupted operations for numerous popular applications and platforms globally, affecting millions of users. The cloud computing infrastructure failure began early Monday morning, with users reporting widespread issues accessing services including Snapchat, Duolingo, Zoom, and various gaming platforms. Amazon confirmed it was investigating increased error rates and latency across multiple AWS services, though the company has not yet identified the root cause of the system failure.

The disruption appears to have originated with servers hosted in the US-EAST-1 region, according to initial reports. This triggered a cascade effect that impacted AWS infrastructure supporting millions of websites and applications worldwide. Downdetector, a platform that monitors service outages, reported receiving over four million problem reports in a single morning—more than double the typical weekly volume—indicating the scale of the disruption across affected services.

Among the services experiencing significant operational problems are communication platforms like Zoom, Signal, and Slack; gaming services including Roblox, Fortnite, and PlayStation Network; social media applications such as Snapchat; and financial services from banks including Lloyds and Bank of Scotland. Streaming platforms Prime Video and Crunchyroll, along with educational tool Duolingo and design platform Canva, have also been affected by the cloud service failure.

The outage has manifested differently across regions, with Amazon's own websites remaining operational in Europe while still experiencing service-specific errors. AWS engineers are actively working to mitigate the issues and restore normal operations. The company has committed to providing regular updates as they work to resolve the widespread service disruption that has highlighted the internet's heavy reliance on cloud infrastructure providers.