Airline adds five new destinations for winter

TWO-DAY SALE WITH FARES FROM £29.99

- By GRAEME WHITFIELD Business and Agenda Editor [e-mail]

BUDGET airline Ryanair is to add five new winter destinations from Newcastle Airport after moving to base a third aircraft in the North East.

The company has announced a two-day sale with fares from £29.99 to accompany the launch.

The $100m (£74m) investment will create around 40 new jobs and support hundreds more.

The additional capacity from the new plane will see Ryanair add flights to Brussels, Budapest, Gdansk, Malta and Wroclaw, as well as scheduling extra flights to Alicante, Dublin and Krakow.

Ryanair's increased capacity will see it add 120,000 additional seats and take its annual passenger numbers at Newcastle above a million.

But the company also took a swipe at the Government over increases to air passenger duty (APD), which it says it holding back UK growth.