Ryanair: The first airline to carry over 100m passengers in one year

Ryanair has become the first scheduled airline in the world to carry more than 100m international passengers in a single year, after reporting that 101.4m chose the airline to travel in 2015.

This follows the official release of the carrier’s December 2015 passenger numbers, showing that traffic grew by 25% to 7.5m customers, representing a 12-month rolling annual traffic result of 101.4m (+17%) compared with the previous calendar year.

Ryanair spokesman Kenny Jacobs commented: “On the back of lower fares in December (following the terrorist events in Paris and Brussels), Ryanair’s monthly traffic grew by 25% to 7.5m customers, while our load factor jumped 3% points to 91%.

“Our traffic growth over the past two years has been remarkable, rising by 50% over our December 2013 traffic figure of 5.0m. We are pleased that over 101m international customers chose to fly with Ryanair in 2015, as we became the first airline to reach this international traffic landmark.

“This is thanks to our load factor active/yield passive pricing, our expanding route network and the continuing success of our ‘Always Getting Better’ customer experience programme, which continues to deliver stronger than expected traffic and load factors, albeit at lower fares.”

The airline has a strong onboad F&B and retail buy-on-board offer.
This new record maintains Ryanair’s ranking as the busiest international scheduled airline in the world for the third year in a row.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) confirmed Ryanair was the world’s leading international scheduled airline back in June of last year (2014) and the year before (2013) in concurrent World Airline Transport Statistics reports.