Ryanair released its December 2016 traffic statistics, announcing that traffic grew by 20% in December from the same month last year, to 9 million customers.

Load factor also rose 3% points to 94%, and rolling annual traffic to December grew 15% to 117 million customers.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said: “Ryanair’s December traffic grew by 20% to 9.0m customers, while our load factor jumped 3% points to 94%, on the back of lower fares in December and the continuing success of our “Always Getting Better” customer experience programme.

"Customers can look forward to even lower fares for summer 2017, so there’s never been a better time to book a low fare flight on Ryanair and we urge all customers who wish to book their summer 2017 holidays to do so now on the Ryanair.com website or mobile app, where they can avail of the lowest fares in Europe."