Ryanair’s year-on-year traffic grew 17% during January

Low cost airline Ryanair’s year-on-year traffic grew by 17 per cent in January, the company has said.

Some 8.77 million passengers flew with the airline compared with 7.5 million in January 2016.

In addition, rolling annual traffic to January grew 15 per cent to 118.3 million passengers.

Ryanair spokesman Kenny Jacobs said the increases were "on the back of lower fares" and the "continuing success" of its Always Getting Better customer experience programme.

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Ryanair eyes Middle East market with 15 new routes in Israel

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Earlier this week, Ryanair announced a major expansion of its Israel operations as it seeks to exploit the Middle East market.

In a massive boost to Israel’s Open Skies policy, the airline added 15 new routes to its operations, from Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel’s main international airport, and from Ovda airport, north of the popular Red Sea resort of Eilat.

Ryanair will operate seven new Tel Aviv routes to Baden Baden, Gdansk, Krakow, Milan Bergamo, Paphos, Poznan and Wroclaw.

In addition, there will be eight new Eilat Ovda routes to Baden Baden, Berlin, Brussels Charleroi, Frankfurt Hahn, Gdansk, Milan Bergamo, Poznan and Warsaw.

The move adds to the airline’s existing routes from Israel to Bratislava, Budapest, Krakow and Kaunas.