Ryanair continued to grow its passenger traffic in January, the airline said, carrying almost 12 million passengers on its flights during the month.

The airline carried 11.8 million passengers during the month, a 69 per cent increase over January 2022, when travel restrictions imposed to help deal with the rise of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 reduced passenger numbers to seven million.

Ryanair operated more than 68,200 flights in January 2023.

The figures show that air travel for the month outstripped pre-pandemic levels, with passenger numbers for January 2019 and 2020 at 10.3 million and 10.8 million respectively.

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Load factor, a measure of how full the flights are, was also up, rising 12 per cent to 79 per cent.

In the past 12 months, Ryanair has carried 165.3 million passengers, a rise of 111 per cent, with a 93 per cent load factor. The airline hopes to fly 185 million passengers in its next financial year, which begins on April 1st.