Budget airline easyJet said today August passenger numbers rose 24 per cent from the same month last year.
The announcement comes as the discount airline continued to buck the downturn experienced by bigger European carriers.
EasyJet, chaired by high-profile entrepreneur Mr Stelios Haji-Ioannou, carried 698,350 passengers in the last month, up from 564,804 in August 2000.
The carrier said its load factor - a measure of how successful an airline is at filling the number of seats on offer - stood at 86.17 per cent, up from 84.59 per cent a year ago.
Shares in easyJet, which floated on the London market last November, closed at 408p yesterday. The stock has outperformed the FTSE transport sector by about 25 per cent since the start of 2001.
The global economic slowdown has hit passenger numbers on larger carriers such as British Airways and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. But it has benefited discount airlines as customers take cheaper flights.
No-frills carriers such as easyJet and bigger rival Ryanair have both reported rising traffic figures. Ryanair announced earlier this week it had carried more than one million passengers in a month for the first time in its 16-year history.