Sunseekers and travellers heading home for Christmas are keeping the region's two main airports busy over the festive season.

Newcastle Airport is expecting 66,000 passengers through its doors over the next two weeks and says it will be business as usual on Christmas Day when flights take off for Europe.

Spain, the Balearics, the Canary Islands and Cyprus are the most popular winter sun destinations while ski lovers are jetting out to resorts in Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland.

Budget airline Go introduced an extra daily flight between Newcastle and Stanstead on Friday in response to demand from travellers in both the North-East and the South.

Newcastle's managing director Trevor Went said: "This is a time of year when travel is an important priority, either for holidays or just to be with relatives.

"Although the industry has had a turbulent time over the last three months, we are now looking ahead to the New Year to kick start the holiday market for Summer 2002."

There were no empty seats on any of the weekend holiday flights from Teesside Airport, where 280 North-East passengers escape the snow for the warmth of Alicante, in Southern Spain.

Spokesman John Waiting said: "Alicante and Teneriffe are very popular and we have a lot of people going to other airports to connect with long distance flights.

"There are a lot of Japanese and Korean people working in the North-East and they set off from home from here on flights to London and Amsterdam."