* Ryanair passenger numbers rise 20 pct y/y in December

* Load factor up seven points on lower capacity growth

* With oil prices locked in, Ryanair reliant on new strategy

(Reuters) – Ryanair shares rose to an all-time high on Monday after passenger numbers surged for a second successive month and the budget airline’s expanding fleet had fewer empty seats than a year ago.

Just over six million people flew with Europe’s largest low-cost carrier in December, a year-on-year rise of 20 percent that Ryanair attributed to lower fares, a drive to sell more tickets earlier and improvements to its much maligned customer service.

Ryanair’s strategy of being nicer to customers has had a bigger impact on its performance than lower oil prices which have benefited some airlines in the short term.

The traffic growth followed a 22 percent jump in passenger numbers in November that prompted Ryanair to raise its profit forecast for the second time in a month, bucking the trend among big European airlines such as Lufthansa and Air France-KLM.

Shares in Ryanair were up 2.4 percent at 10.1 euros by 1145 GMT, and up over 50 percent in the past 12 months.

Davy Stockbrokers, which described the numbers as a “stellar performance”, said it expects the load factor growth to continue and increase passenger numbers to just over 90 million for the full-year to the end of March.

Ryanair hedges its jet fuel purchases further in advance than most, meaning it is locked into higher oil prices but argues that stability is more important to it than the marginal savings it might make on fuel costs.

It said last month that it had taken advantage of the recent dips to extend its fuel hedges out to the first half of its 2017 accounting year.

The Irish airline said it increased its load factor — an indication of the number of seats sold as a percentage of capacity — to 88 percent from 81 percent a year ago.

SOURCE REUTERS, Read more..