Airport boss in customer pledge amid growth drive

MANCHESTER Airport must modernise to remain the “northern gateway” to all corners of the globe and challenge the inaccurate perception that the London airports are the best for long haul connectivity.

This is according to Manchester Airport Group (MAG) chief executive Charlie Cornish who was addressing the Great Manchester Business Conference at Lancashire County Cricket Club’s facility The Point, Old Trafford.

“We consider the airport to be an international gateway and a global connection point for the northern region – that’s anything above London, all the way up to Manchester and beyond,” he said.

But he also took a swipe at proponents of the London airports – Heathrow and Gatwick – in the battle for long haul customers.

“There is lots and lots of rhetoric across the UK, particularly if you go down to London that there is more connectivity from Heathrow and this is patently untrue,” he said, talking extensively about how the new route to Hong Kong had opened up the potential of greater business links with many areas of China.

“Manchester airport will next year handle about 22.5 million passengers. In 10 years’ time it could be 30 million and has potential to grow to 55 million beyond that.”

However, Cornish said that despite Manchester’s  continuing growth – up one million to 22 million in 2014 and another million predicted in the next 12 months – it needed to modernise.

“What I would like to see is the whole customer experience change in Manchester,” he said. “We’ve now got to think about how we can modernise its and make it one of the leading airports of Europe.
 
“What’s important is how we use new technology, communications and allow people to access quicker services. So in three years’ time Manchester Airport will be very different than it is now and it 10 years it will be hugely different.”

There was an international flavour also when UK Trade and Instustry North West director Clive Drinkwater and Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce chief executive took to the stage in a light-hearted but robust discussion about exporting.

Co-host and pro-manchester chief executive John Ashcroft joked with Drinkwater over previously stated prediction UK exports would top £1 trillion by 2020 before the UKTI chief replied: “The economy of the North West is actually doing pretty well in terms of exporting.

“Economists tend to talk about the export of goods, but we also need to talk about the export of services as well. We ought to think about the journey international firms make and how much value is brought back to the UK. Need to look at the long term trends.

Memmott joined in the fun when he said: “Everyone knows the importance of targets, but they’ve got to be realistic targets.  We would have to grow 10% year on year until 2020 to achieve that target and it’s nonsense. So let’s be realistic and aspirational.

Drinkwater said the Manchester region needed the number of export firms to grow because “we don’t have enough”.

“We also need to get firms which are already exporting to do more and we need them to do it in the high growth emerging markets of the world, like Asia, Latin America and Africa.”