Europe's largest budget airline Ryanair said on Wednesday that it handled a total of 1.8 million passengers in May, up sharply from the meagre 70,000 passengers it carried in the same month of last year, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
In a statement posted on its website, the Ireland-headquartered airline said that it operated over 12,000 flights in May, with a load factor or average occupancy rate per flight standing at 79 percent.
Statistics from the airline showed a continuous improvement in traffic numbers over the last three months. In March, the airline handled half a million passengers; in April, the figure doubled to one million; by May, the airline's monthly traffic figure increased by 80 percent from the previous month.
Ryanair predicted in a mid-May report that the number of passengers it will handle in the fiscal year 2022, which commenced from April 1 this year, is likely to be towards the lower end of its previously guided range of 80 million to 120 million.
In the fiscal year 2021, Ryanair reported a net loss of 815 million euros (about 995 million U.S. dollars), mainly due to a sharp fall in its traffic numbers because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the 12 months to March 31, 2021, the airline handled a total of 27.5 million passengers, down 81 percent when compared with the 148.6 million passengers it carried in the previous fiscal year, according to an annual report released by Ryanair in mid-May.