RYANAIR is flying high after announcing an expansion of its routes through Leeds Bradford Airport to deliver 1.3million passengers through the site.

The Irish airline will now fly to an extra two routes for a total of 17 destinations from the Yeadon site, as it announced its winter 2017/18 schedule.

The expansion will see new flights to Wroclaw, the largest city in Western Poland and Murcia in souther-eastern Spain, which will both be twice weekly, added to its schedule, which will be boosted to 55 weekly flights.

Ryanair, which has used the airport since 1996, has added to its portfolio of routes, which will include Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia; Girona, in north-east Spain; Gran Canaria, Warsaw Modlin and Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital for its summer 2017 schedule.

Robin Kiely, Ryanair’s head of communications, said: “Next year will be our biggest year at the airport.

“We are pleased to launch our 2017 LBA winter schedule, our biggest ever, which includes two new routes, which will deliver 1.3m customers per year and support 975 jobs at LBA.

“These new routes show we continue to grow our LBA traffic, tourism and jobs, underlining our commitment to the Yorkshire region.

“It is about bringing people to LBA and the region for both business and pleasure.

“There is plenty of tourism potential here as well. We have three aircraft based here.

“This is fantastic news for the region. We use 200 different airports in total and LBA is certainly one of our biggest. It is a really important airport to us.”

Tony Hallwood, aviation development director at LBA, said Ryanair’s expansion will give a knock-on effect for Bradford businesses.

He said: “The two new routes show LBA is growing.

“It also shows our future is bright. This is not just good news for the airport, but also for the city of Bradford.

“The announcement will help support the surrounding restaurants and bars and other leisure facilities.

“With the strong ethnic backgrounds in Bradford, having an extra destination to Eastern Europe shows good planning. It is our fourth Polish route now.”