The August summer peak holiday month saw passengers using Manchester Airport Group airports rise by more than 9% to 6.1 million.
The figures saw Manchester airport grow 9.1% year-on-year and Stansted by 11.8%.
Almost three million travellers were handled by Manchester airport, up 9% on August 2015, to give a 12 month rolling total of 24.6 million.
Stansted handled almost 2.5 million passengers and saw its busiest single month since 2007. More than 93% of seats on Stansted flights were occupied during the month.
East Midlands Airport grew by 6.2% as it handled 596,000 passengers, with Croatia, Ireland and the Canary Islands the top performers.
However, Bournemouth saw numbers decline by 16.5% to 83,598.
Manchester airport chief executive, Ken O’Toole, said: “August is always the busiest month of the year for the airport, as families get away during the school holidays and it was no different this year.
“Spain has certainly proved popular, which reflected the increase in capacity we saw from airlines to the likes of the Balearics and the Costas.
“New long haul services that have launched this summer to destinations like Boston, Los Angeles and Beijing have all contributed to a record summer for Manchester Airport.
“With new routes being recently announced to Houston, Tobago and Phuket and Mauritius, passengers will soon benefit from an even greater range of long haul destinations directly from Manchester.”