Irish budget airline Ryanair has flatly denied a report by the Spanish airport authorities that a flight from Britain to Lanzarate requested a priority landing because it was running low on fuel.

The budget carrier is already under investigation in Spain over three low-fuel emergency landings on 26 July.

On Tuesday afternoon, Ryanair flight FR2048, a Boeing 737-800 flying from Leeds Bradford airport in Britain to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, had to abort a landing because of wind, Spanish airport authority AENA said.

"The Ryanair flight was placed in third position for landing. At that point, it asked for priority to land because it was running low on fuel," said an AENA spokesman in the Canary Islands.

"It did not declare an emergency but it did ask for priority," he said.

Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamanara denied the plane was low on fuel.

"On the second approach the air traffic controllers asked the captain if he was declaring a 'fuel emergency' and the captain responded 'negative', that he was not doing so, given that the tanks had an amount of fuel substantially above "minimum landing fuel'," he said in statement.

Spanish aviation authorities rerouted three Ryanair flights to Valencia from Madrid on July 26 because of thunderstorms over the Spanish capital that prevented them from landing there as planned.

The planes were asked to join a queue for landing but after circling over Valencia for a while all three planes contacted air traffic control to request permission to make an emergency landing because their fuel was running low.

The Irish Aviation Authority has opened an investigation into the three emergency landings, in cooperation with Spanish authorities. Spain's state security agency has also opened its own probe following an AENA complaint.

Dublin-based Ryanair, Europe's largest budget carrier, operates a fleet of nearly 294 Boeing 737-800s. It transported 8.7 million passengers last month, up from 8.1 million during the same month last year.