Ryanair Soars After Post-Paris Attacks Fare Cut

Ryanair's customer numbers soared 25% in December on a year earlier, after it cut fares to help attract travellers after the Paris terror attacks in November.

The budget carrier credited its decision to trim prices for passenger numbers hitting 7.5 million last month.

Rival easyJet, which is the second-largest airline in France, also recorded growth in passengers - carrying 4.8 million - but its rate of growth on December 2014 was 4.6%.

Its load factor - the number of seats booked per flight - fell compared to growth of 3% to 91% at Ryanair.

EasyJet said: "This strong performance is despite the predicted reduction in bookings in the weeks following the terrorist attacks in Paris.

"EasyJet (Other OTC: EJTTF - news) is France's second largest airline and around 23% of the airline's capacity ‎during December was on French touching routes and as a consequence the load factor fell by (almost 2%) to 86.6%.

"Load factors are now recovering to normal levels and management do not anticipate any change to full year market expectations."

Ryanair's chief marketing officer Kenny Jacobs said: "On the back of lower fares in December (following the terrorist events in Paris and Brussels), Ryanair's monthly traffic grew by 25% to 7.5 million customers, while our load factor jumped 3% points to 91%."

He added: "We are pleased that over 101 million international customers chose to fly with Ryanair in 2015, as we became the first airline to reach this international traffic landmark."

The airline, which has been expanding its reach towards some of easyJet's stronger routes, also said on Thursday that investment in services to Europe from Belfast were being placed at risk by "outrageous" air taxes in Northern Ireland.

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) argued that Air Passenger Duty of £13 per passenger should be abolished - and warned five planned routes from Belfast International could be mainly within the UK only unless the tax was cut.

Chief commercial officer David O'Brien said: "We are not asking the Government for money, we are asking them to stop taking money from us and if they don't we will make decisions on that basis."