Europe's biggest budget airline, Ryanair, said on Monday its load factor was 91 percent of capacity in August, and that it carried a record 4 million passengers in the month.
Ryanair said a 23 percent rise in its traffic in August from 3.3 million in the same month last year meant it was the first airline to carry more than 4 million international passengers in a single month.
Its load factor was unchanged from August 2005.
Ryanair separately announced three new routes out of Dublin -- to Malta, Stockholm and the Canary Islands -- and plans to give away 4 million free seats on its 371 European routes.
At a Dublin news conference later, Chief Executive Michael O'Leary said the seven day free seat sale, which does not include airport and government taxes, would help "recapture" bookings lost in August due a security alert surrounding an alleged bomb plot that sparked chaos at British airports.
Bookings had been off around 10 percent in the week following the scare, O'Leary told reporters.
"They were back up again to normal by the following Thursday but it still means there were the guts of 50,000-60,000 bookings we dropped over that period compared to normal," he said.
"Today's seat sale is a response to that and trying to drive those bookings now into September."
He said the lost bookings would not show up in the September traffic figures because of the free seat sale but the effect would be seen in yields -- how much an airline receives per seat -- in the September-November period.
"But we've already accounted for that. We've been very conservative in our predictions on average fares through the back half of the year," he added.
O'Leary said the airline, which has hedged its fuel requirements to the end of 2006 at USD$74 a barrel, was keeping an eye on the market for further opportunities.
"We are continuing to look at opportunities to hedge in the first quarter of next year and would be happy to do so at anything under USD$75 a barrel," he said.
"We'll keep hedging but at the moment we can only hedge about six months forward. If you try to get nine or 12 months forward the market simply arbitrages it away."
The airline's GBP3 million (USD$5.7 million) compensation claim against the British government for business lost in August due to stepped-up airport security was proceeding, he said.
"We filed court papers last week, they were submitted to the Department of Transport and they were filed with the court in London this morning."
The UK government has said Ryanair has no grounds to seek compensation.
Asked whether he was confident of winning the action O'Leary said: "If you look at Ryanair's record on legal actions I am anything but confident... but let the courts decide."
