At just under one million passengers, the national flag carrier saw bookings rise by more than 27 percent on a year ago.

According to the recently privatised airline, the strong performance was largely due to a increase of 220 percent in all traffic to the United States.

Average occupancy on flights across the pond was set at around 86 percent.

The carrier also performed strongly domestically, with routes to Madeira and the Azores experiencing large increases, along with the Lisbon to Porto connection.