Hundreds of children are flying with Santa thousands of feet into the air on special flights out of Shannon Airport this afternoon.

The pre-booked free flights are provided by Ryanair as a Christmas gift to celebrate the airline's latest routes out of Shannon.

Eights new routes have been launched to Berlin, Paris, Fuerteventura, Warsaw, Faro, Munich, Nice and Krakow.

Santa took to the skies with the children - but there seems to be some mystery as to how he boarded the flight: