STANSTED Airport has made a flying start to the year by recording the airport's busiest ever January.

Throughout the month, over 1.74 million passengers passed through the airport, an increase of 5 percent over the same period last year.

In the 12 months ending January 2017, Stansted's total passenger numbers grew by 7.3 percent to 24.4 million.

Andrew Cowan, Stansted Airport’s CEO, said: “We have begun 2017 in a similarly positive way to how we ended 2016, with a record number of passengers for the month of January taking advantage of the extensive range of destinations available from Stansted."