Whisper it, but Manchester Airport is getting better

Celebrity spin doctor turned podcaster Alastair Campbell praised Manchester Airport on his The Rest is Politics podcast recently, claiming he sailed through security and customs in 15 minutes.

The Airport is claiming that wasn’t just a one off and that over the Easter weekend 99% of passengers got through security in 15 minutes or less.

New queue monitoring technology and the deployment of over 2000 new members of staff have rapidly improved performance from the grim days of last spring and summer when delays, queues out of the buildings and staff shortages caused chaos, as TheBusinessDesk.com reported at the time, including when the managing director Karen Smart lost her job.

New data reveals that Manchester Airport served more than 305,000 passengers over the long weekend, with, Friday, 7 April, and Monday, 10 April, the busiest days with almost 80,000 passengers flying in or out each day.

The Easter weekend comes shortly after the beginning of the airport’s summer season, when more flights to destinations all over the world start running. The most popular destinations with travellers over Easter were Dubai, Dublin, Alicante and Tenerife.

Over 1.9million passengers flew from or to the airport in March – 30% higher than March last year and 92.5% of pre-pandemic levels.

Manchester Airport Managing Director Chris Woodroofe said: “We want every passenger to have a great experience here at Manchester Airport and we are pleased to have delivered a really positive start to the summer season, including during the busy Easter weekend. We’ve put in a range of new measures this year to give people a great experience, from a state-of-the-art queue monitoring system to a new 100-person resilience team that can troubleshoot a range of issues across the airport as they crop up.

“We’ve seen 99% of Easter weekend passengers get through security in under 15 minutes, which means they can relax in our departure lounges and enjoy the fact that all our food, drink and shopping outlets are now fully open.

“Manchester Airport is the UK’s global gateway in the North and we’re ready to make sure that all our passengers, whether they’re travelling short haul or further afield, see the airport at its best and get a great start to their journeys.”

Manchester Airport has welcomed more than 2,000 new members of staff since last April. That includes our new resilience team, made up of more than 100 team members who are trained in a variety of roles across the airport so that they can be deployed to help wherever issues occur, including at check-in and with baggage handling.

Manchester Airport is part of Manchester Airport Group (MAG), which also runs East Midlands and London Stansted airports.