‘FLY MANCHESTER’ TARGETS THE LOW COST MARKET

Manchester Airport, the global gateway of Northern England, has launched the second phase of the ‘Fly Manchester’ campaign, targeting the low cost sector.

The low cost campaign aims to win back passengers and encourage them to use their local airport. Currently, over 1 million passengers from Greater Manchester use other airports to fly from, when similar routes operate at their local airport.

Manchester Airport has overtaken other airports in recent times in terms of the number of low cost routes available. As an example, easyJet will serve 32 routes from Manchester this summer, Ryanair will serve 34, Jet2.com will serve 39 and Monarch will serve 43 routes.

      Ken O’Toole, Chief Commercial Officer for MAG,
      owners of Manchester Airport, said:

      “We have an unrivalled network of services – and
      our range of low cost destinations continue to
      prove popular with flights to Spain, Greece, Egypt
      and Turkey boosting the options for Summer
      2013. Manchester has more low cost flight
      options than other northern airports – with
      almost 100 low-cost flights on offer to different
      routes here.

      “The low cost campaign is focussed on
      attracting passengers back to Manchester who
      might not be aware that we have increased our
      range of services over the last year. Airlines have
      increased their offering this summer and we’ve
      seen a positive increase in passenger numbers
      but we’re not stopping and want to continue to
      attract passengers from across the North of
      England.”

At the start of 2013, Manchester Airport launched its ‘Fly Manchester’ campaign to promote the range of services available this summer and win back passengers from its catchment area that currently travel to other airports. Manchester Airport’s catchment area is already home to 22 million people and its extensive ground transport infrastructure and on-site rail, bus and coach interchange means 60% of all UK businesses are within a two-hour drive of the airport.

Statistics released recently by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) showed that Manchester has seen the largest rise in terms in passenger numbers over the last year, with an increase of 847,000 (4.5%) to 19.7million passengers. The airport has its sights firmly fixed on going over the 20m passenger mark this year.

Popular low-cost airline operators like easyJet, Jet2.com, Ryanair, Monarch, Germanwings and Norwegian all have numerous routes from Manchester Airport to destinations such as Moscow, Prague, Warsaw, Ibiza, Cologne and Stavanger this year helping to cement Manchester Airport as the North West’s low cost airport. Other popular destinations this summer from Manchester are likely to include Athens, Sharm El Sheikh, Corfu, Santorini, and Zante.

Manchester Airport is the global gateway for the North of the UK and the largest airport outside London with over 200 destinations served by 65 airlines. For more information about flights visit: www.manchesterairport.co.uk