Low-budget Irish airline Ryanair has just announced a further 29 new routes from Spain for the 2018 season, this will also increase the frequency of current existing daily routes, and see a growth of an extra 10% boosting its destinations. The airline will carry approx. 41 million passengers every year and will include more flights to Alicante, with Valencia, and Seville being added in with new routes. Michael O'Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair spoke in a press conference in Madrid this week, in which he had announced the 29 new routes for the 2018 winter calendar for Spain. This will increase the carrier's routes to 500 in total, with more frequent flights and now up to 35 existing routes in total. At present Ryanair which operates flights to 26 Spanish airports has announced that they will increase their staff levels by at least 500 new employees to meet their ever-growing market demand for budget air travel.

The new routes that have been mentioned will include Alicante in Spain to Newquay, Cornwall, in England, Gdansk in Poland, and Bologna in Italy. A new Spanish internal route has been introduced from Alicante to Seville in southern Spain making the journey from east to south much quicker. Also included from Seville with selected 2 weekly flights path to and from Edinburgh in Scotland and Bristol airport in England. Bristol will also be added to the flight path to the vibrant city of Barcelona northern Spain with a weekly flight schedule. Included in the list is Southern Tenerife in the Canary Islands which will have a new route to and from Milan, Malpensa airport in Italy and Gran Canarias will also have a route to Treviso airport, Venice again in Italy. In the speech also mentioned new routes from Weeze airport, Dusseldorf in Germany, also included Mallorca, the Balearic Island of Spain to and from Bergamo airport, Milan again in Italy and lastly Ciampino-G. B. Pastine airport, in Rome Italy.

Michael O'Leary said, “To celebrate the announcement of our 2018 winter program for Spain, we have launched a range of seats from just 19.99€ to travel between March and May. These tickets are now available for your reservation until Friday, February 16, through our website. "During the press conference in Madrid, Mr O'Leary mentioned that Spain was a big part of the Ryanair package with approx. 27% of all its flights and that it is "very important for us, which is why we want to reach an agreement with SEPLA."SEPLA has said that they have been in talks with Ryanair and are planning to take legal action against the airline if necessary to hopefully force the budget carrier into signing full-time Spanish contracts for all their flight pilots that work for the company.