It’s time, yet again, for a moment of reflection on the performance of a few low-cost carriers over the preceding month. For the first time we’re including Monarch’s stats in our comparative essay. Why? Well, because Monarch sent us a nice little email a few days ago with their April stats. Low-cost carrier publicists, take note.

For the fourth straight month, SkyEurope beat Ryanair in increase of numbers of passengers flown. Against April 2006 numbers, the number of passengers carried by SkyEurope last month ballooned 44.7%, against growth of 19% for Ryanair and growth of 16.4% for Monarch.

SkyEurope also trounced Ryanair in April load factor percentage increase (that is, the average number of seats filled), with a load factor increase of 7.4%, against a 2% drop in seats filled by Ryanair (and a 4.9% drop in seats filled by Monarch.)

Despite this, Ryanair filled marginally more seats than SkyEurope did in April: 83%, against 82.1% for SkyEurope and 80.2% for Monarch.

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