Budget airline Ryanair said today it carried 5.2million passengers last month, representing its best-ever November.

The Irish-based carrier, which is the largest operator out of Stansted Airport, added that its load factor ? the proportion of available seats actually sold ? rose by a full percentage point compared with November 2012 to 81%.

Last month’s passenger figure represented a 6% increase compared with the 4.9m flown in November last year and takes the company’s rolling annual total to 81.2m, a 2% increase compared with the previous 12 months, with a load factor of 83%.

Ryanair spokesman Robin Keily said: “Ryanair carried over 5m customers in November 2013, a new record for November, thanks to the success of Ryanair’s offer of lower fares.

“Our load factor rose 1% to 81% and we enjoyed a record 12 months, with over 81m customers choosing one of Ryanair’s low fares, the first time we have carried over 81m passengers in a 12-month period.”

The end of November saw Ryanair launch two new routes from Stansted, with daily flights to Dortmund in Germany and a twice daily service toand Lisbon in Portugal.

Earlier last month, Ryanair also announced plans to increase capacity on its flights to and from Stansted Airport by 1.3million seats next summer.

The budget carrier will launch 12 new routes and increase frequencies on 17 others, as part of plans to increase passenger volumes at Stansted from just over 13m a year to more than 18m by 2018.

Its commitment follows a new agreement with the new owner of Stansted, Manchester Airports Group, which acquired the airport from the former BAA group earlier this year.