Ryanair is boosting winter capacity by more than one million seats to and from 20 UK airports.
The move comes as the no-frills giant seeks to capitalise on British Airways trimming its winter schedule by 10,000 flights from Heathrow.
Ryanair now expects to see its full year traffic grow from an original target of 165 million to more than 166.5 million passengers.
The additional flights will serve Spain, Italy, Portugal, Morocco, Greece and France from airpots including Stansted, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Ryanair group chief executive Michael O’Leary said:“While BA are cancelling 8% of their winter schedule due to staff shortages and ‘hopeless Heathrow’s’ capacity restrictions, Ryanair is now adding more capacity to our largest ever UK winter schedule so that UK families can book with confidence without the risk of flight cancellations.”