Ryanair has reported that it carried 9 million customers in December - that’s 20% more than the same month in 2015.

Its load factor rose by 3% to 94% - meaning that for every 100 available seats 94 were sold.

Its rolling annual traffic to December grew by 15% to 117m 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."