Manchester Airport has recorded almost 2 million passenger movements for March 2023. This represents a 30% increase on the airport’s year-on-year figures, and also shows that Manchester is operating at more than 92% of pre-pandemic levels.
Strong Easter performance
Manchester Airport has started the holiday season strongly, with more than 300,000 passengers smoothly passing through the Northern gateway over the Easter weekend.
Furthermore, over the course of the Easter weekend, 99.5% of passengers were processed through security in 15 minutes or less.
Friday, 7 April, and Monday, 10 April, typically proved to be busiest days at the airport over the Easter break with almost 80,000 passengers flying in or out of the airport each day.
The Easter weekend comes shortly after the beginning of the airport’s summer season, when more flights to destinations all over the world start running.
The most popular destinations with travellers over Easter were Dubai, Dublin, Alicante and Tenerife.
New data shows that 1.9 million passengers flew from or to the airport in March – 30% higher than March last year and 92.5% of pre-pandemic levels.
Manchester Airport Managing Director Chris Woodroofe said: “We want every passenger to have a great experience here at Manchester Airport and we are pleased to have delivered a really positive start to the summer season, including during the busy Easter weekend.”
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“We’ve put in a range of new measures this year to give people a great experience, from a state-of-the-art queue monitoring system to a new 100-person resilience team that can troubleshoot a range of issues across the airport as they crop up.”
“We’ve seen 99% of Easter weekend passengers get through security in under 15 minutes, which means they can relax in our departure lounges and enjoy the fact that all our food, drink and shopping outlets are now fully open.”
“Manchester Airport is the UK’s global gateway in the North and we’re ready to make sure that all our passengers, whether they’re travelling short haul or further afield, see the airport at its best and get a great start to their journeys.”
Staff increases
In terms of personnel, Manchester Airport has welcomed more than 2,000 new members of staff since last April. The human resources increase include the implementation of a new “resilience team.”
This is made up of more than 100 team members who are trained in a variety of roles across the airport so that they can be deployed to help wherever issues occur, including at check-in and with baggage handling.
Recent news
In other recent airport news, Irish carrier Aer Lingus has increased capacity on its daily Manchester to New York services, which will now operate on an Airbus A330 aircraft for the first time.
The airline previously operated single file Airbus A321LR on the transatlantic service. The switch to the wide-body aircraft will increase available seat capacity on each flight by 72% over the upcoming summer season.
Summary
Manchester Airport is part of Manchester Airport Group (MAG), which also runs East Midlands and London Stansted airports.
In the last 12 months 54m passengers have flown through MAG airports – 25m of them from Manchester.
