Drone disruption at Gatwick hits easyJet operations and costs

LONDON (Reuters) - British budget airline easyJet said on Tuesday that drone disruption at London's Gatwick airport in December had cost it millions of pounds in lost operating revenue and additional costs.

The airline had a 5 million pound ($6.44 million) revenue impact and 10 million pounds in extra costs after a mystery saboteur wrought 36 hours of travel chaos at London's second biggest airport, affecting 82,000 easyJet customers and cancelling over 400 of its flights.

"There has been be a one-off cost impact from this incident, but underlying cost progress is in line with expectations," Chief Executive Johan Lundgren said.

The airline said that booking levels for 2019 were encouraging, despite uncertainty around Brexit, and that it expected full-year headline profit before tax to come in broadly in line with current market expectations.

"Second half bookings continue to be ahead of last year," Lundgren said.

($1 = 0.7769 pounds)

(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Kate Holton)