Ryanair has announced that it carried 1.9 million passengers in December 2020, 83 per cent down on the same month in 2019 when 11.2 million flew with the low-cost carrier.
In December, the airline operated 22 per cent of its usual schedule with a 73 per cent load factor.
The airline said that passenger numbers for the year were 66 per cent down on 2019.
Before Christmas, the airline said it was having to cut 12 domestic and international routes due to a change in policy by the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) regarding wet-leasing of aircraft.
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “We are disappointed to have to cancel 12 UK domestic and international (Morocco and Ukraine) routes from London, Manchester, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Belfast and Derry, because of the CAA’s unexpected policy-shift."
The CAA's Paul Smith responded to the allegation saying: “It has been our long-standing position that a UK airline with a significant presence in the UK, such as Ryanair UK does, should not rely heavily on using wet-leased, foreign-registered aircraft to undertake their operations. Doing so undermines the competitiveness of the UK aviation industry and the effectiveness of the regulatory regime."
The CAA said that Ryanair UK currently has only one aircraft listed on the UK's register out of a total fleet of more than 470 aircraft