Ryanair, Spain’s No. 1 airline, today (24 Aug) celebrated carrying its one billionth passenger last month, since its first flight took off from Waterford to London Gatwick in July 1985.

Madrid customers and visitors can choose from 50 low cost routes, including 7 new routes to Cagliari, Lamezia, Luxembourg, Naples, Newcastle, Nuremberg and Verona, which will deliver 6.8m customers at Madrid Airport this year, and can enjoy the latest “Always Getting Better” improvements including:

• 20 Air Europa routes from Madrid on sale on Ryanair.com
• Connecting flights at Rome Fiumicino and Milan Bergamo with more airports to follow
• A new partnership with Erasmus Student Network offering discounts & a dedicated booking platform
• Alexa voice recognition to search flights, hotels and flight status on the Ryanair.com website

Recruitment is starting for Travel Labs Spain, a state-of-the-art digital and IT innovation hub based in Madrid city centre, and new offices will open in October 2017, delivering 250 new high-tech jobs. Travel Labs Spain will be Ryanair’s third digital innovation hub following Dublin and Wroclaw and a range of roles including frontend developers, Java developers and .Net developers, are currently open.

Ryanair celebrated its one billionth passenger and continued Spanish growth by releasing seats for sale from Madrid at prices starting from just €19.99 for travel in September. These low fare seats are available for booking until midnight Monday (28 Aug) only on the Ryanair.com website.

In Madrid, Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary said:

“We are pleased to celebrate carrying our one billionth guest since our first flight in 1985, as even more customers choose our low fares.

As the largest airline in Spain, we are excited to open Travel Labs Spain, our third digital and IT innovation hub, which will deliver 250 new jobs here in the heart of Madrid, as we continue to grow Spanish employment, especially for young people. Madrid is a major tech city, with a highly educated workforce and the home of some of Europe’s biggest tech innovators and we’re recruiting the best and brightest talent to join our online travel revolution.

Labs continues to deliver the core digital improvements under our “Always Getting Better” programme, with Ryanair.com now the world’s largest airline website, our mobile app having over 23m downloads and more than 25m customers signing up for the “My Ryanair” customer registration service, as we continue on our journey to becoming the “Amazon of travel.”