The routes will fly from Stansted, Luton and Gatwick and will create more than 500 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers.

The new rules will fly between Stansted and Helsinki, Oradea, Stockholm, Tampere, Trapini, Treviso and Zagreb. New routes from Luton are to Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Grenoble, Naples, Shannon, and Turin. There will be one new route from Gatwick – to Malaga in Spain.

To celebrate the new routes, Ryanair has launched a £19.99 seat sale for travel until the end of November 2021. Flights must be booked by midnight on Thursday 2 September on the Ryanair website.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair CEO, said: “Ryanair is committed to re-building the London’s tourism industry, jobs and connectivity as we grow across Europe and recover air travel to pre-Covid levels. As Ryanair takes delivery of 55 Boeing 737-8200 ‘gamechanger’ aircraft this winter, we are delighted to announce these 14 new routes from our three London airports in Stansted, Luton and Gatwick. We will also create over 500 new jobs for pilots, cabin crew and engineers this winter at our London airports as we gear up for more fleet and route growth in S2022.

“As vaccinations rise and consumer confidence returns, Ryanair again calls on the UK Govt to scrap PCR tests for fully vaccinated arrivals and also to suspend APD (air passenger duty), to allow airlines and airports quickly recover connectivity, jobs and tourism in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.

“APD makes UK airports uncompetitive against lower cost EU airports, which is why Ryanair has added capacity at other EU airports in recent months in the likes of Zagreb, Stockholm, Billund and Riga. While Ryanair is committed to its London airports, the lack of government support for aviation and tourism recovery creates further barriers to traffic and growth.”

O’Leary used the routes launch as an opportunity to criticise the government’s travel traffic light system, claiming London is ‘empty of tourists’ this summer. O’Leary told Sky News that the traffic light system, introduced in April, is harming the economic fightback from coronavirus restrictions.

He said: “Business is being hampered by this continuously chopping and changing of traffic lights that just cause confusion whereas the rules should be simple: if you’re double-vaccinated no restriction and if you’re not double-vaccinated get tested.”

Ryanair and Manchester Airport launched legal action against the UK government over travel restrictions in June. The two organisations claimed that ministers had not been clear about how the government has made its decisions regarding the categorisation of countries as red, amber or green.