Ryanair's best ever sales day and its strongest traffic day occurred nearly three weeks apart, according to Hitwise figures.
The carrier, which sells 98% through ryanair.com, sold over 1.5 million seats between Friday 9 and Thursday 15 January, according to a release issued this week.
"The Monday [12 Jan]" was "its best ever one day sales with over 350,000 seats snapped up," the carrier said.
Traffic figures from Hitwise however reveal that on Ryanair's busiest sales day, arch rival easyJet took a 19% share of visits to sites within Hitwise's 'Aviation - Commercial Airline' category. Ryanair's share was 14.39%.
The figures, which track back to the start of December last year, show that Ryanair.com's best day, in terms of market share of visits to the site, was on December 23. The site saw a lift in traffic on Dec 9 last year when it launched its 12-day seat sale.
On Dec 15 it added another 250,000 seats to that offer, resulting in little impact to market share.
Both the December 23 traffic spike and the Jan 12 sales spike seems unrelated to any obvious promotional activity.
EasyJet hasn't released comparable sales figures.
However, Hitwise shows that its strongest market share during the period co-incided with its launch on Jan 9 of its current biggest ever seat sale promotion.