Aer Lingus has today (December 10th) begun services from its new Belfast base to destinations in Europe.

The airline has launched flights to Amsterdam and Barcelona today, with a new route to Geneva to begin tomorrow and further services to be rolled out over the next few months, the Belfast Telegraph reports.

Aer Lingus chief executive Dermot Mannion said the carrier had already seen a reasonable level of demand for the new flights.

"Demand for all routes is encouraging and we are already getting passengers booking online for services next summer," he commented, going on to state that "anything is possible" when asked about a potential Belfast-USA route in the future.

The airline will launch its new flights from Belfast to Rome, Budapest, Malaga and Faro on February 25th. Last month, it announced that it is to introduce a twice-weekly service to Nice during 2008.

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