Ryanair traffic jumps 12% in December

Budget airline Ryanair posted a 12% jump in traffic for December on Thursday.

Total traffic in the final month of 2018 rose to 10.3m customers from 9.3m in December 2017.

Traffic at Ryanair was up 9% to 10m passengers, while traffic at Laudamotion - the Austrian carrier it acquired in August last year - came in at 0.3m with a load factor of 93%. The load factor gauges how full the planes are.

On a rolling 12-month basis, total passenger numbers were up 8% to 139.2m.

Ryanair operated more than 57,000 scheduled flights in December, with over 81% arriving on time.