Vueling, Spain’s new generation airline, won the accolade of most innovative low cost model airline last night at the industry’s Budgie Awards.

Industry representatives applauded the efforts the company is making to provide their passengers with a wide range of services at competitive prices. In particular, the sector valued the company's efforts to implement successfully, since July 2010, a pioneering programme of connecting flights through its hub at Barcelona, initially Vueling to Vueling and its network of flights, and since March this year with legacy carriers, including Iberia. Today, Vueling can offer 550 routes through its Vueling Connects network.

Of Vueling's award winning website vueling.com, the jury considered usability, personalisation, the simplicity of its purchasing processes, its design and the possibility of recovering data from the reservation. Vueling was also shortlisted in the categories: Best Ancilliary Revenue and Best Sales and Distribution Innovation.

The panel awarding the accolades last night were representatives of consultancies specialising in the aviation sector including Planely Spoken and JLS Consulting, former executives of airlines including British Airways and Virgin Nigeria, and members of the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, which specialises in analysis and research in aviation.

The Budgie Awards were created to honour and generate public recognition of the efforts, accomplishments and positive contributions of companies and individuals in the low cost airline industry. Vueling competed in these nominations with renowned international companies including Easyjet, Germanwings, Spirit, SkyExpress, Wizz Air and Virgin Australia.

Vueling CEO Alex Cruz collected the awards on behalf of the company and noted: "This  recognises the ongoing work of all the young people at Vueling who develop new and innovative products and services as a daily challenge to pursue the growth of the company and our industry.” This is the third consecutive year that Vueling has received industry recognition in these awards.  Last year Alex was named as Best CEO.

Vueling continues its growth driven by new international bases in Toulouse and Amsterdam as well as Madrid operations enabling Vueling to feed Iberia long haul flights.

Vueling added 26 new routes for summer 2011, increasing the company’s route network and consolidating passenger traffic growth.