Manchester Airport records busiest month in four years as it prepares for school holidays

Manchester Airport is ready for the school holidays having recorded its busiest month since September 2019.

A whopping 2.8 million passengers flew from the airport in June – 15% more than last year.

More than 26 million passengers have flown from Manchester in the last 12 months, meaning it remains the busiest airport outside London and passengers have an unrivalled choice of destinations on offer from. Value destinations like Palma, Alicante, Antalya and Malaga were among the most popular in June with large numbers also heading for city breaks in Barcelona and Dublin.

Chris Woodroofe, managing director of Manchester Airport, said: “We know our passengers really value their summer holidays and we are looking forward to welcoming millions of people through our terminals in the weeks ahead. As the UK’s global gateway in the North, we are proud to give people a fantastic choice of destinations - more than any other airport outside London – and options to suit all budgets.

“That means the 22m people in our catchment area can grab anything from a short city break or a fortnight in the sun, to an adventurous trip of a lifetime further afield. And we’re confident that as we go into the summer holidays, we’re ready to deliver a great experience for them. All our fantastic bars, restaurants and shops are open, our security queues are reliably under 15 minutes and our 100-person strong resilience team is primed to intervene where we do see issues.”

The top destination in June was Palma, followed by Dublin, Alicante and Tenerife. Barcelona entered the top ten this month, edging out Amsterdam as people seek sunnier destinations.

The top ten destinations in June:

• Palma De Mallorca
• Dublin
• Alicante
• Tenerife
• Malaga
• Faro
• Dubai
• Antalya
• Barcelona
• Belfast

A spokesperson for the airport says: “Since last summer the airport has introduced a new 100-person resilience team made up of people trained in a range of functions across the airport so they can support and make sure the impact on passengers is minimised if anything does go wrong.

“We have also introduced state of the art systems to help us track how long people are queuing in security for and to take action where waits become too long.”