Flight cancellations fail to dent Ryanair traffic numbers

Airline record growth of 8 per cent in October with passenger numbers at 11.8 million

Ryanair’s traffic grew by 12 per cent to 128.2 million customers in the year to October, on a rolling annual basis. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien
Ryanair’s traffic grew by 12 per cent to 128.2 million customers in the year to October, on a rolling annual basis. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien

Passenger traffic at Ryanair grew by 8 per cent to 11.8 million customers in October, the same volume the low-cost airline carried in September.

Almost a million new customers used the airline last month in comparison with October 2016, when the airline carried 10.9 million passengers.

Ryanair’s load factor, a measure of how much it is able to fill aircraft with passengers, increased by 1 per cent to 96 per cent, slightly below the load factor recorded in both August and September.

On a rolling annual basis the budget airline’s traffic grew by 12 per cent to 128.2 million customers in the year to October. That was up slightly on the rolling annual traffic in the year to September.

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Commenting on the figures, Ryanair's Kenny Jacobs noted that "these figures include the flight cancellations announced in September".

Peter Hamilton

Peter Hamilton

Peter Hamilton is a contributor to The Irish Times specialising in business