Earlier this month British Airways posted record profits as tight cost control paid off at the flag carrier.

On Friday, Virgin Atlantic delivered its highest profit since 1999 after cost controls and new routes helped to offset rising fuel prices.

Ryanair, which celebrated its 20th birthday last week, is expected to reveal a net profit of €248m (£170m) for the 12 months to the end of March versus €206.6m the previous year, a rise of 20%, according to analysts' consensus forecasts.

Growth has come on the back of significant route expansion and robust underlying passenger volume growth, analysts say. It comes despite the Irish airline being relatively unhedged against fuel price rises. Europe's biggest no-frills carrier is forecast to post revenues of €1.29bn compared with €1.07bn the year before.

Earlier this week Ryanair's colourful Irish chief executive Michael O'Leary said he was comfortable with net profit estimates of around €246m and that the airline had seen a "fantastic" start to its 2005/2006 business year in terms of summer bookings.

Stephen Furlong, an analyst at Davy Stockbrokers in Dublin, said: "Capacity growth I would see accelerating over the summer... so the key focus will be on high oil prices and compensating for that with better yields [average revenue per passenger]."