The new route is part of the summer operation to Portugal, to be announced soon, and the company's service already includes a connection in the Azores archipelago to London from Ponta Delgada, on the island of São Miguel, as well as to Manchester, also in the United Kingdom.

To mark the start of the operation, Ryanair launched an operation to sell seats at reduced prices in Europe for travel from now until the end of November, which should be bought by 3 October.

The airline has been providing connections to the Azores since March 2015, when the routes between the mainland and the autonomous region were liberalised.

Currently, in addition to connections from Ponta Delgada to Lisbon, Porto, London and Manchester, the airline also operates flights between Terceira and those two Portuguese cities.

The Azores government said ikn a press release that the new weekly flights from London to Terceira will be between April and October, and the summer 2020 operation also includes a second flight from London to São Miguel, from June to September, replacing the previous route from Manchester to this island.

The regional energy, environment and tourism secretary, quoted by the Azores government press office, on Tuesday expressed great satisfaction at the announcement of Ryanair's new route.

Marta Guerreiro said that this is the first-ever route from the British market to this island.

Guerreiro added that this operation is the result of a strategy of continuous communication and analysis of opportunities that the region maintains with the main tour operators and airlines with an interest in the Azores destination.

The British market, she stressed, was one of the nine origin markets defined in the Strategic and Marketing Plan for Tourism in the Azores, with a large margin for growth.

The British are recognised as having the greatest appetite for travel outside their country, which, combined with good geographical proximity to the Azores, allows us to assess a good potential for growth of flows from this market to the region, she said.