Ryanair sets new passenger record after almost 17 million flew with airline in July

Ryanair flew almost 17 million passengers in July, the highest ever number that it has carried in a single month.

The Irish carrier said on Wednesday that 16.8 million people flew with it in July, 13.5 per cent more than the 14.8 million travellers it carried during the same month in 2019.

The total was a new monthly high for the airline, beating its previous record of 14.9 million, set in August three years ago, before Covid-19 curbs 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.

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Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Ryanair Holdings, confirmed last week 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 more than 62 million people since the start of April.

The airline says that restraints reimposed following Covid’s Omicron wave damaged sales in December, January and February, while Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit March and Easter bookings.

Mr O’Leary also noted that “load factors”, that is the percentage of seats sold, were recovering to pre-Covid levels, when they remained consistently above 90 per cent. Load factors remained lower than normal last year as air travel’s recovery began.

The airline is offering 15 per cent more seats on its planes than in 2019 over the summer, but may trim this back to closer to 10 per cent over the winter.

Just 9.3 million people flew with Ryanair in July last year, when the EU formally launched its digital Covid certificate, 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 week 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.