THE chief executive of easyJet, Carolyn McCall, says Scotland is a key growth market for the low-cost airline and held out the prospect of a significant increase in flights from Scottish airports.

Describing easyJet as the consistent growth airline in Scotland, Ms McCall said the company saw plenty of room for further expansion with attractive opportunities in both the leisure and business sectors.

"For us Scotland has always been an important part of our strategy and of our growth plan," she said.

She added: "In the last four years we've grown our capacity in Scotland by 20 per cent, it's really significant and actually other airlines have taken out capacity."

Ms McCall, who took charge at easyJet in 2010 after running Guardian Media Group, said the growth drive could result in easyJet serving a range of new destinations from Scotland and increasing the frequency of existing connections.

It serves 38 destinations from Scottish airports.

Ms McCall indicated that easyJet could add another plane to the 11- strong fleet of aircraft it has based in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Following the recent launch of a service between Glasgow and Marrakech, Ms McCall said more flights for popular holiday destinations could be on the agenda.

Weeks after easyJet's head of UK sales Sophie Dekkers floated the possibility of running flights from Aberdeen to Portugal to target golfers, Ms McCall indicated the idea will be given serious consideration.

She said: "The way it works is there are finite assets, people have to make business cases for those planes. However there's also a macro strategy which says that Scotland is an important market, which is agreed by the company."

Ms McCall added: "We would also thicken some of our frequencies for business routes, which is part of our strategy.

"We've got a lot of business passengers flying out of Scotland either to London or to Europe."

The company has been pleased with the performance of the Inverness to London Gatwick route that it started running after buying slots at the English airport from Flybe last year.

easyJet could also add flights between Scotland and existing bases in other countries under its strategy of joining the dots.

Speaking on a visit to Edinburgh to meet investors, Ms McCall said the Scottish Government could provide an important boost by axing Air Passenger Duty if control of the tax is devolved to Scotland as recommended by the Smith Commission.

"I think the Scottish Government has made it very clear that if they had the power they would cut APD because they know how important air travel is to Scottish consumers and we would applaud that," said Ms McCall, who reckons the tax weighs heavily on the Scottish market.

While giant travel agent Thomas Cook said last week that trading has got tougher in recent months, Ms McCall said easyJet had not picked up any signs that demand is slowing.

Announcing a 21 per cent increase in profits earlier this month, to £581 million for the 12 months to September, the company said forward bookings for the first half of the current year are slightly up on the prior period.

easyJet flew 5.4 million passengers between Scotland and the rest of Europe in the year to September, up around five per cent, from 5.1m in the preceding year.

Total group passenger numbers rose by 6.6 per cent annually to 64.8m.

Ms McCall said easyJet group is increasing its seats capacity by 3.5 per cent in the first half of the current year.

"Legacy carriers are retrenching and restructuring and more and more people are choosing to fly with low fair airlines," said Ms McCall.