MANCHESTER Airport has started the holiday season with more than 300,000 passengers taking off with a smooth getaway.
Over the Easter weekend, 99.5 per cent of passengers got through security in 15 minutes or less.
Friday, April 7 to Monday, April 10, were the busiest with almost 80,000 passengers flying in or out of the airport each day.
The Easter weekend comes shortly after the start 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.
New data shows that 1.9 million passengers flew from or to the airport in March.
This is 30 per cent higher than March last year and 92.5 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Manchester Airport managing director Chris Woodroofe said: “We’ve seen 99 per cent 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.
“We want every passenger to have a great experience here at Manchester Airport.
“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.
“Manchester Airport is the UK’s global gateway in the north.
"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 a new resilience team, made up of more than 100 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.
In the last 12 months, 54 million passengers have flown through MAG airports – 25 million of them from Manchester.
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