Hundreds of thousands of passengers enjoy smooth Easter getaways from Manchester Airport

• Over the easter weekend 99% of passengers got through security in 15 minutes or less
• The airport served more than 305,000 passengers over the long weekend
• During March Manchester Airport served almost 2m passengers – a 30% increase on March last year and more than 92% of pre-pandemic levels

Manchester Airport has started the holiday season strongly, with more than 300,000 passengers smoothly passing through the Northern gateway over the Easter weekend.

Over the course of the Easter weekend, 99.5% of passengers got through security in 15 minutes or less. Friday, 7 April, and Monday, 10 April, were the busiest days at the airport with almost 80,000 passengers flying in or out of the airport 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.

New data shows that 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.

In the last 12 months 54m passengers have flown through MAG airports – 25m of them from Manchester.