Manchester Airport is on course and nudging nearer to an all-time record number of 22 million passengers as the number of people using the UK’s 3rd busiest airport increased again last month.
Nearly 5% more people used the airport this September as a total of 2.3m people travelled through the airport, up from 2.2m in the same period last year. It takes the rolling annual total to 21.7m passengers.
Domestic passenger numbers rose by 8% over the previous year and international traffic has again proved strong rising by over 9%.
The increases follow off the launch of a new £500,000 investment by airport owner MAG to extend its successful ‘Fly Manchester’ marketing campaign, targeting the four million passengers from its catchment area that travel to other airports when they could access the same routes direct from Manchester.
Ken O’Toole, Chief Commercial Officer for MAG, owner of Manchester Airport, (PICTURED LEFT) said:
“Our investment in the latest instalment of the campaign aims to promote Manchester as the option for long haul flights across Birmingham, Stoke, Stafford, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Dudley, Leeds and Bradford; as well as the low cost option across Merseyside, St Helens, Warrington and Wigan.
“September has proved to be a strong end to a great summer for us and the sustained increase in the number of passengers using this airport shows that we are having an impact in terms of raising awareness of the routes on offer from Manchester across our catchment area.
“It’s a virtuous circle – the more people that use the airport, the more directs routes and new services our airline partners will offer ; while the more flight options and capacity this brings, enables and encourages more people to fly direct from Manchester – so it is a big win-win both for the regional economy and for the people living here.”
During the month, Delta Air Lines announced it would launch daily nonstop service between Manchester Airport and New York John F. Kennedy International Airport from June 2, 2015 as it increases its network between the U.K. and North America. Virgin Atlantic will also start its first daily non-stop Manchester to Atlanta International Airport service.
Ryanair also launched its Manchester summer 2015 schedule with new routes to Eindhoven and Shannon, adding more flights & improved schedules on 3 other routes: Alicante, Lisbon and Madrid.
Flybe secured a codeshare agreement with Helsinki-based airline, Finnair. From 15 September, it will offer passengers onward travel through Flybe’s Manchester hub to Finnair destinations in Finland and on to the Scandinavian airlines wider global network, which includes 15 Asian destinations.
The amount of freight carried through the airport also saw an increase of 1.7%, up from 8,134 tonnes to 8,272 tonnes year-on-year.
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