Manchester Airport has recorded the busiest month in its history with 3.36million passengers flying through the northern hub in August.
The airport – which is the UK’s busiest outside London – has beaten the record of 3.31million passengers in a month set in August 2019.
The busy month was driven by the school summer holidays, which saw passengers jetting off to a huge range of the 200 destinations served by Manchester Airport – with Turkey proving especially popular among the North’s travellers.
The month also saw the airport’s busiest single day on record – with 113,000 passengers flying into or out of Manchester on 23 August.
The airport saw excellent customer service levels with 98.2% of passengers waiting less than 15 minutes to get to security – and 74.3% waiting less than five minutes.
Taken together, July and August saw 6.56million passengers using Manchester Airport – making it the busiest summer the airport has ever recorded, beating the 6.48million set in 2019.
Manchester Airport’s transformation programme will be completed in 2025. When it is finished more than 70% of its passengers will use the brand-new Terminal 2. The first half of the new Terminal opened in 2021 and the second is on track to open next year.
The airport is set to announce a range of new shops and food and drink outlets that will operate in the second phase of Terminal 2 in the coming weeks.
As part of the project Terminal 1 will close and the number of airlines operating from Terminal 3 will be reduced to make the new terminal the heartbeat of the airport. A number of airlines are moving from Terminals 1 and 3 to Terminal 2 in the coming weeks.
Manchester Airport’s Managing Director Chris Woodroofe said:
“We are really proud to connect the people of the North to the world – that means offering them an unrivalled range of destinations with a huge range of airlines and providing them with the highest levels of customer service.
“And I am delighted to say that this summer we’ve achieved that. Not only have we seen record numbers of passengers using the airport, we’ve seen 98% of them waiting for less than 15 minutes to get to security and almost three quarters wating less than five minutes.
“That’s an amazing achievement and my thanks go out to my staff and all the third parties based around the airport who have made that happen. The summer holidays are the highlight of the year for many families and we’re pleased to be able to play a part in that.
“I said that last year was our best summer ever but this year we’ve managed to improve on that. Now we’re looking ahead to next year and the completion of our £1.3bn transformation programme that will see more than 70% of our passengers using our brand-new Terminal 2 and improvements made to Terminal 3 as we close Terminal 1.”
