Low-cost airline Ryanair today celebrated its inaugural flights from London Stansted to Dortmund and Lisbon.

Ryanair marked the launch by releasing 100,000 seats at prices starting from £15.99 on more than 1,000 routes across its European network, for travel on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in January and February, for bookings made before midnight on Thursday, November 28.

Ryanair’s Lisa Cashin said: “Ryanair is delighted to celebrate two inaugural flights today from London Stansted to Dortmund and Lisbon.

“These new routes will mean more flexibility for passengers in Greater London and East of England when traveling to Germany and Portugal this winter. Ryanair will operate daily flights to Dortmund and twice daily flights to Lisbon and with flights starting from £15.99 we urge passengers to book a seat today on Ryanair.com.”

Richard Haining, Stansted Airport’s customer service director, added: “Launching new flight connections is always exciting and I’m delighted to welcome Lisbon and Dortmund onto the Stansted route network today.

“These are just two of many new routes set to be launched by Ryanair at Stansted and I wish them every success.”

Last week, Ryanair announced plans to increase capacity on its flights to and from Stansted Airport by 1.3million seats next summer.

The budget carrier will launch 12 new routes and increase frequencies on 17 others, as part of plans to increase passenger volumes at Stansted from just over 13m a year to more than 18m by 2018.

Its commitment follows a new agreement with the new owner of Stansted, Manchester Airports Group, which acquired the airport from the former BAA group earlier this year