Budget airlines see further growth for April, new stats show

Two of the biggest budget airline operators at Manchester Airport and Liverpool John Lennon Airport announced increased traffic levels for April.

Ryanair saw traffic during the month rise 9% to 12.3m customers, compared with the same month last year.

Its load factor, or the number of available seats sold, remained unchanged at 96%.

Rolling traffic levels for the 12 months to April revealed an 8% increase in passenger numbers, to 131.4m so far.

Meanwhile, easyJet experienced better figures on both passenger numbers and load factor levels, despite more than 300 cancellations.

It revealed that it flew 7.45m passengers last month, up 4.7% on the same month last year. The load factor improved by 0.5% to 93.4%.

The airline said it had to cancel 323 flights during April.

More than half were due to French industrial action, with the remaining cancellations due to adverse weather, a 24-hour closure of Schiphol airport, and technical issues.

Its monthly figures do not include statistics for Tegel Airport in Berlin.

Its rolling figure for the year to April showed an 8% improvement on passenger levels for the 12 months so far, with 82.8m passengers carried.

That led to a 1.4% improvement in its load factor, rising to 93.3% of seats available.