Ryanair has busy July with 10 million passengers

Ryanair and Aer Lingus aircraft at Dublin airport.

That still puts it a long way below US airlines such as Delta, which claims to “serves more than 170 million customers” (whom one assumes are indeed airborne) and United Airlines, on 140 million passengers.

Load factor was up by four percentage points to 95pc.

Ryanair has announced that it carried 10.1m passengers in July, an 11 percent increase on the same month last year, it was the first time according to Ryanair, that any airline has carried more than 10m passengers in any one month.

The company reported in April reported its full-year results in May, which revealed a 12% jump in revenue to €5.65 billion (£3.95 billion) and a 66% rise in profit after tax to €867 million (£605 million), helped along by a plan to improve its customer service.

Its spokesman Kenny Jacobs said: “These record customer numbers and highest ever load factors are due to our lower fares, our stronger forward bookings and the continuing success of our … customer experience programme”.

The group also offered good news for holidaymakers last month when it forecast falls in air fares thanks to lower fuel costs for airlines and industry-wide discounting.

The budget carrier said that the figure was more than the number Aer Lingus – which is being taken over by British Airways owner IAG – flew in the whole of 2014.