The number of passengers carried by no-frills airline easyJet in February was 12.3% higher than a year earlier, though the load factor was lower.

easyJet carried 3.39m passengers in February 2009, 12.3% more than the 3.02m carried in February 2008.

However the load factor, defined as the number of passengers as a proportion of the number of seats available for passengers, dipped to 85.3% from 87.0% the year before.

In the 12 months to the end of February 2009 the total number of passengers carried by easyJet was 46.75m, up 5.2% from 44.44m in the 12 months to the end of February 2008.

Over the same period the load factor was 86.1% versus 85.1% a year earlier.

Earlier this week British Airways and Ryanair released their passenger figures for February.

British Airways said traffic, which it measures in revenue passenger kilometres, was 1.1% higher than in February 2009. Passenger capacity, measured in available seat kilometres, was down 1.9% year on year. The passenger load factor improved by 2.2 percentage points to 74.2% from a year earlier when flights were affected by severe weather conditions in the first week of the month.

Ryanair's passenger numbers in February 2010 rose 6% from a year earlier to 4.37m, The load factor slipped to 75% from 78% in February 2009.

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