DISCOUNT airline Ryanair will start flying to seven new destinations from Stansted in April.

The airline will also be increasing the number of flights on existing routes with extra services to Dublin, Shannon and Glasgow Prestwick.

Ryanair's chief executive Michael O'Leary said: "This summer Ryanair will fly on 52 routes to 47 destinations around Europe, with a fleet of 36 Boeing 737 aircraft including 15 of the most modern 737-800 next generation aircraft.

"With these additional routes and frequencies, we expect to grow our traffic from seven to nine million passengers over the coming year and in doing so we will save those customers over 1 billion euros on the air fares being charged by our competitors."

The new destinations will be Stockholm and Gothenburg in Sweden, Pescara and Trieste in Italy, Esbjerg in Denmark, Salzburg in Austria and Brussels in Belgium.

Mr O'Leary added: "This will undoubtedly be Ryanair's most successful summer schedule ever.

"By adding two new countries to the Ryanair low fares family (Austria and Belgium), we now have the opportunity of bringing low fare competition to Austrian Airlines, BA and Sabena and by adding new destinations in Scandinavia and Italy we will continue our policy of increasing the competitive pressure on British Airways, Alitalia, SAS and all of Europe's high fare carriers.

"Europe's consumers have been ripped off by the high fare carriers for far too long now."