Manchester Airport on a high after 'busiest December'

Manchester Airport saw the busiest December in its 76 year history last month, as passenger numbers travelling through the North’s global gateway increased 7.45% on last year.

With many people seeking winter sunshine or returning home to the UK for the festive period, a total of 1,435,470 people used the airport in December 2014 – beating the previous highest December of 1,386,259 passengers in December 2007.

Ken O’Toole, Chief Commercial Officer for MAG, said: “The on-going success is testament to our Fly Manchester campaign, targeting people in our catchment who use airports other than ours.

“We now fly to over 200 destinations around the globe and continue to attract new airlines and routes.”

December also saw the start of the new Cathay Pacific service, flying direct to-and-from Hong Kong four times a week, making Manchester the only UK airport outside of London with a direct service to China.

This year will see the launch of a host of new services, including:

· easyJet flights to Funchal (Madeira), Pisa, Porto and Marseille, Split and Kefalonia

· Ryanair flights to Bologna, Lisbon, Eindhoven, Zadar and Stuttgart

· Thomas Cook flights to Miami flying twice-weekly from 3rd May 2015

· Jet2.com’s new routes for Summer 2015 to Antalya (Turkey), the Greek Island of Kefalonia, Malta and Tunisia

· Turkish Airlines increasing capacity to Istanbul with three daily flights from June

· Emirates to add further capacity to the Dubai services with the introduction of an additional A380 service.

Manchester Airport continues to add approximately one million passengers per year and was also voted Airport of the Year for 2014.