Low-cost airline flybe is taking off from Southampton to more sun, sea and sand destinations with the announcement of three new routes today.

Within days of starting services out of the city the airline said it will be flying even more services, positioning itself ahead of British Airways, to become the airport's biggest carrier.

Alicante in Spain and Bergerac in France are to be added to its daily timetable while the airline is expanding into the holiday island of Ibiza with a busy weekend schedule.

These latest services, with fares starting from £29, plus taxes and charges, will commence on June 27 and are in addition to Belfast City, Dublin, Jersey, Geneva and Milan Bergamo, which began last week.

Flights to Murcia and Malaga in Spain and Toulouse, France take off on May 19, which together with the airline's existing Guernsey services, will total 12 flybe routes from Southampton in the summer.

Ian Taylor, flybe's general manager of market development, said: "Our positioning as Southampton's low fares airline has been met with phenomenal response.

"Passengers are asking us why no-one has offered these services before. This reaction, quantified by almost 150,000 bookings taken so far this year, has encouraged us to realise our plans to expand the Southampton network earlier than first envisaged.''

flybe expects to carry 900,000 passengers in its first year of operation from the central southern airport, enabling Southampton's target of the one million-passenger mark to be passed sooner than anticipated.