Ryanair had a load factor of 95% last month - meaning that for every 100 available seats 95 were sold.

8.2 million people flew with the Irish airline in February - that's 800,000 more than 2016.

Total traffic during January and February was 14% higher than last year - 119.1 million people have already flown with the company in 2017.

Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said, "Our February traffic grew by 10% to 8.2m customers, while our load factor jumped 2% points to 95%, on the back of lower fares and the continuing success of our 'Always Getting Better' customer experience programme.

"Ryanair’s lower fares and AGB services are leading to slightly higher than expected load factors in Q4 and accordingly, we now expect full year traffic to just about hit 120m, up almost 13% over the 106.4m customers we carried in our 2016 financial year," he added.

Brexit

Last week Ryanair renewed calls for the UK to move to clarify how its exit from the EU will affect current "Open Skies" agreements.

"If we don’t know this time next year, what are airlines going to do? ... Are we going to have to make significant capacity cuts?" Mr Jacobs said.

The Irish company has already shifted the focus of its growth plans away from the UK.

It has warned that growth at UK airports will fall from close to 10% last year to 2% next year.