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Monarch collapse hits Manchester airport passenger growth

Passenger growth at Manchester airport in October was constrained by the collapse of Monarch.

Year-on-year growth was down from 7.4% in September to 3.1% last month, although he north-west hub still handled 2.4 million passengers in October.

Monarch had accounted for 5.4% of flights from Manchester in September, averaging 250 flights a week.

Parent company Manchester Airports Group has seen strong interest from airlines to take over the slots operated previously by Monarch so they can operate new services at Manchester next year.

School half term holidays helped boost passengers using MAG’s four airports by almost 5% last month.

Stansted saw numbers rise by 7.3% to 2.3 million passengers despite Ryanair cancelling some services due to its pilot holiday rota debacle

East Midlands airport achieved its busiest October in a decade with numbers growing by 3.5% to nearly 480,000.

However, Bournemouth airport’s traffic stayed flat at 69,000 passengers.

Stansted commercial director Martin Jones said: “October this year was the busiest on record for the month with demand boosted by a strong performance during the final weeks of the summer schedule and an increase in the number of people heading overseas for half-term.

“Since MAG acquired the airport in 2013, we have now welcomed over 100 million passengers, a fantastic achievement and a clear reflection of the demand that exists across our region for convenient and affordable flight options and the growing choice of destinations on offer at Stansted.

“In the past few weeks we have seen a host of new route announcements and launches, including a third transatlantic route from Primera Air to Toronto and Wow Air adding a connection to New York JFK plus new services from Air Corsica, Mediterranean Air, Ryanair announcing its reinstating its Belfast service and moving it to Stansted in addition to, Jet2.com and Jet2holidays confirming it will operate an expanded winter programme from Stansted in 2018/19.

“Looking to the future, we expect to see continued strong growth at Stansted as we increase the number of airlines and destinations we serve.”

MoreGatwick sees record October despite Monarch failure putting brakes on growth

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