Ryanair flew 16.9 million passengers in August, breaking its record for the highest ever number it has carried in a single month for the second month in a row.
The Irish carrier said on Friday that the number of people who flew with it in the month was 52 per cent more than the 11.1 million travellers it carried during the same month last year. It flew 14.9 million passengers in pre-Covid August 2019.
Last month’s total was a new monthly high for the airline, beating its previous record of 16.8 million set in July. The record before that stretched back to August three years ago when it carried just over 14.9 million passengers, before Covid-19 wreaked havoc with air travel.
Ryanair’s figures show that it sold 96 per cent of the seats on its aircraft last month, which is slightly below the 97 per cent recorded during the summer months of 2019. It operated over 92,800 flights in August.
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Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair Holdings, confirmed last month that the group hopes to fly 165 million passengers in its current financial year, which ends on March 31st. However, he cautioned that this would depend on a fresh Covid wave or a possible escalation of the war in Ukraine not hitting a still “fragile recovery” in air travel over coming months. Ryanair has flown about 80 million people since the start of April.
The EU formally launched its digital Covid certificate in July last year, which enabled most member states to reopen for travel. The airline sold 80 per cent of its seats that month.
Air travel regards 2019 as the last normal benchmark year as pandemic restrictions either grounded or limited flying in 2020 and 2021.
Many airlines are cutting capacity in the face of high fuel costs and bottlenecks across Europe’s airports. Mr O’Leary suggested last month that these trends could result in a general upswing in ticket prices over coming months.
Ryanair has avoided most of the fallout from labour shortages at airports and among ground handling companies, but says air traffic control strikes and disruptions hit punctuality this summer.
