In total, 1.9 million passengers were recorded for the usually busy month. This is a big drop from the 11.2 million passengers reported in December 2019, and down from its peak seven million reported for August 2020.

However, it operated approximately 22% of its normal December schedule with a 73% load factor.

On a rolling annual basis, the budget airline served 52.1m passengers, down 66% from 152.4 million in 2019.

However, the figures are up from the trough of just 40,000 customers seen in April at the height of the pandemic.

At the end of last year, Ryanair announced it would cut its winter flight schedule (November to March) from a 60% to 40% capacity due to weaker bookings as EU governments impose tougher travel restrictions.

It added that with the reduced winter capacity, it expects full year traffic to fall to approximately 38 million flyers.