The early Easter holiday helped boost passenger numbers last month at Norwegian Air Group.
Conversely, April figures are expected to reflect a weaker year-on-year performance, according to the Scandinavian parent company of Norwegian Air and regional carrier Wideroe.
Norwegian Air handled 1.5 million passengers and Wideroe 276,413, totalling 1.82 million for the group in March.
The load factor for Norwegian Air increased by four percentage points year-on-year to 85%, while the on-time performance also improved compared to previous months.
Chief executive Geir Karlsen said: “We are delighted to publish strong traffic figures yet again, this month got an extra boost thanks to the early Easter holiday.
“The high regularity we had in March reflects the great work all our colleagues do every day to make sure our customers can trust Norwegian for all their travels.
“This is especially important over Easter with so many customers having planned their vacation trips, and I am proud to say that we had zero cancellations for all our international flights.
“We are now looking ahead to the next vacation season and are this week kicking off with a spring sale campaign.
“The booking trends for the summer season are beginning to look very good, but we naturally anticipate a weaker April as a result of the Easter holiday coming early this year.”
CO2 emissions per passenger kilometre were reduced by 10% over the same period last year, amounting to a reduction of about 250,000 passenger return flights between Oslo and Bergen, according to the company.
“We are very pleased to see that our work to reduce carbon emissions is paying off,” Karlsen added.
“The newer fleet contributes to this, in combination with better planning resulting in higher a load factor.
“In addition, we are continuously working on optimising our flight patterns with the help of advanced digital tools, to further reduce fuel consumption.
“We have set an ambitious target of cutting emissions by 45% by 2030, and we believe that our combination of fleet renewal, operational efficiency and the use of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) is the way to reach these targets.”