Ryanair passenger traffic rises 10% to 12.7m in August

Airline announces 10th German base as Memmingen

Traffic at Ryanair for August increased by 10 per cent to 12.7 million passengers on the back of "lower fares", the company said on Tuesday.

Some 1.2 million additional customers used the airline in August 2017 compared with the same period in 2016 when the airline recorded 11.5 million passengers.

The company’s load factor, a measure of how much it is able to fill aircraft with passengers, increased by 1 per cent to 97 per cent.

By the end of August the airline had carried 126.2 million customers this year, an increase of 13 per cent on last year.

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The company also announced on Tuesday that it had opened its 10th German base in Memmingen.

For its summer 2018 schedule the company will have one aircraft based at the airport which will help service six new routes from the base to bring its total there to 19 routes. Ryanair’s traffic at Memmingen will grow by 26 per cent to about 860,000 customers, it predicted.

Commenting on the investment, Ryanair chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said: "Our based aircraft represents an investment of $100 million, which further underlines our commitment to growing traffic, tourism and jobs in Bavaria and we look forward to working closely with our airport partners to deliver further growth in Germany."

Peter Hamilton

Peter Hamilton

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