Ryanair is looking at the prospect of offering free flights or offering 50% off is customers choose to stand for short haul flights lasting upto one and a half hours.

“We might take out the last five or six rows and say to passengers ‘Do you want to stand up? If you do you can travel for free’,” Mr O’Leary said.

SKY News reported that Ryanair has asked Boeing to look at the possibility of converting its planes or delivering a new fleet with “vertical seating”.

A Ryanair spokesman stressed the non-seating plan would have to be given the OK by the Irish Aviation Authority.

But Mr O’Leary shrugged off suggestions the move was a cost-cut too far.

“Why is this any different to what happens on trains where you see thousands of people who cannot get a seat standing in the aisles, and it happens regularly on the Underground,” he said.

Mr O’Leary thought of using the ideas he got from the Chinese airline Spring, which said it is able to squeeze 50% more passengers on board and redcue costs by 20%.

Other cost cutting intiatives by Ryanair include a “fat tax” – charging heavier passengers more to fly – caused anger, as did similar initiatives to cut the number of toilets on flights and charge people to spend a penny.

The company announced on Friday it had carried 5.84 million passengers in June, 13% more than a year earlier.

Low-cost airline easyJet said it carried more passengers during June than over the same period last year.

However British Airways felt the struggle as it announced on Friday that it carried 5% fewer passengers in June, while its planes were 79.6% full, compared with 81.4% a year earlier.

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