Customs men have seized more than a million black market cigarettes smuggled into the North-East.

The illegal tobacco - which would have been sold at knock-down prices in the run-Christmas - is worth more than £200,000.

More than one million cigarettes were snatched at Newcastle Airport in the last two weeks.

And officers have also recovered 392,000 cigarettes and 85 kilos of tobacco at Robin Hood Airport in Doncaster.

Revenue & Customs staff at Newcastle International Airport say they have been stunned by a string of huge hauls discovered over the past fortnight.

One passanger alone, jetting back from Tenerife, was caught carrying 37,000 cigarettes.

HM Revenue and Customs Head of Detection Steve Brassington said that smugglers tend to target regional airports, believing them to have less stringent security measures.

But he said in reality there is a strong customs presence in regional airports and ports across the UK.

He said: "In the last 16 days HM Revenue & Customs officers at Newcastle Airport have intercepted more than one million contraband cigarettes.

"The excellent work of our officers has meant that we have successfully stopped these illegally smuggled cigarettes from finding their way onto the streets.

"This is a national problem, and quite a big problem. I don't think people realise how big it is.

"Smuggling gangs assume, and rightly so, that customs will have a big presence at big national airports and ports so they go through the regional gateways because they think there will be a smaller presence.

"But we have a strong customs presence at both these local outlets, and in airports and ports across the UK."

"Smuggling is a year round problem but there are peaks and troughs - Christmas time and in the height of summer tend to be these peaks. Smuggling gangs can easily trade their illegal goods over the party season, especially cheap cigarettes and tobacco."

Customs officials also stress that many of the cigarettes brought back are counterfeit and can contain dangerous chemicals. Manufactured abroad at a fraction of the price, they can be sold for as little as £2 a packet, making them easily affordable to children.

Cash made by smugglers is often traced back to international organised crime gangs, who use the profits to fund other illegal activities such as drugs and prostitution rackets.

A spokesperson for HM Revenue & Customs said: "These cigarettes tend to not to be the popular high street brands that you can buy from your local newsagent and their quality is usually very poor.

"Many of the cigarettes being brought in are likely to be counterfeit, and these dangerous fakes are not something that we want to be available on the streets.

"It's bloody nasty stuff that's in these counterfeit cigarettes but they are so good at counterfeiting these days that to look at I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a genuine cigarette and a counterfeit cigarette.

"It is true that some passengers genuinely do not know their allowances, especially from Non EU countries or places such as The Canary Islands, and bring back excess amounts of cigarettes and other goods, which are subject to pay excise duty, but the main problem for us is organised activity, smugglers and smuggling gangs."

"It is common for cigarette smugglers to work in criminal gangs and will go to great lengths to get their haul into the country through our regional airports and ports."

Last week a man and a woman arriving on a flight from Tenerife were found with more than 300,000 cigarettes, worth £75,000.

That came just days after 414,000 fags destined for the black market were taken from another Canary Islands flight.

Since then, tens of thousands have been seized on a daily basis, bringing the total to more than one million. On Saturday night, 89,000 were taken from a string of passengers on a flight from Alicante, Spain.

Earlier the same day, 37,000 were found in the luggage of one person, jetting in from Tenerife.

Officers have revealed that a giant seizure was made at Doncaster's Robin Hood airport destined for Tyneside.

They received information there were a high number of passengers carrying bags and suitcases filled with cigarettes brought back from a trip to mainland Spain.

More than 20 passengers from the flight were questioned and officers searched bags and suitcases and found most of them filled solely with contraband cigarettes.