West Midland travellers swell passenger volumes at Manchester Airport

MANCHESTER Airport, which has been targeting the West Midlands in its recent marketing campaigns, says it remains on track for a record year as passenger numbers continued to rise in September, climbing 5% to 2.3 million in the month.
 
The rolling annual total for the country’s third busiest airport now stands at 21.7 million – just 300,000 shy of its all-time high of 22 million.
 
Domestic passenger numbers rose by 8% over the previous year and international traffic was up by more than 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 at MAG, owner of Manchester Airport, 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.”
 
Mr O’Toole said Manchester’s growth would woo more routes from new and established airlines. He added: “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.”
 
The amount of freight carried through the airport also saw an increase of 1.7% in September, up from 8,134 tonnes to 8,272 tonnes year-on-year.