easyJet PLC (LON:EZJ) carried 5.5% more passengers in December than the same month a year ago even as it cancelled more flights due to adverse weather and industrial action.
The budget airline said it had 5.8mln passengers, compared to 5.5mln last year.
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The load factor, the number of passengers against the number of seats available, rose 1.5 percentage points (pp) to 91.4%.
easyJet cancelled 580 flights in December, compared to 330 last year, due to severe weather conditions across Europe and some impact from labour strikes.
In the year to December, the number of passengers rose 9.6% to 81.6mln and the load factor edged up 1.6pp to 93.0%.
Passenger numbers also up elsewhere
Sector peer International Consolidated Airline Group (LON:IAG), the parent company of British Airways, on Thursday reported a 8.6% increase in passenger numbers to 7.6mln in December.
Group traffic, measured in revenue passenger kilometres, edged up 6.2% in December and the load factor was up 0.8pp to 81.2%.
Average seat kilometres , a measure of capacity, grew 4% for the month.
In the year to December, passenger numbers grew 4.1% to 104.8mln, the load factor climbed 1.9pp to 83.2%, revenue passenger kilometres rose 7.8% and available seat kilometres gained 5.4%.
British Airways had the weakest growth last year after having to cancel flights following an IT crash and labour strikes.
IAG in December announced that it would buy the assets of Austrian airline NIKI from insolvent Air Berlin for €20mln. NIKI will become a new subsidiary of IAG’s Spanish airline Vueling.
easyJet has also snapped up some of Air Berlin’s assets. It has agreed to buy the German airline’s runway slots and 24 aircraft at Berlin Tegel Airport.