OXFORD Airport’s new managing director is targetting european routes as early as next year.

Andi Pargeter says destinations including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Geneva and Zurich have been identified as places where there is sufficient demand, particularly from local business travellers.

But the 31-year-old said turning the Kidlington airport into a large airport on the scale of Birmingham was not on the cards.

Ms Pargeter said services to some destinations were “targeted to see operations commence in 2013” although it was too early identify which ones.

The move will mark a significant step up in operations for the airport, buoyed by the success of recent launches of flights to Jersey and the Isle of Man.

But Ms Pargeter stressed there was “no way” Oxford would ever become a large airport along the lines of Birmingham which was a small operation until the 1960s.

She added: “We are looking at the business market – a niche market – and we shall stick to that. We are also restricted by the runway as to the size of aircraft we can take.”

Ms Pargeter, who lives at Childrey, near Faringdon, has been at the airport since July 2010 when she became head of finance, working for the owners – multi- millionaire property and data centre developers, David and Simon Reuben.