Manchester Airport has recorded passenger volumes at more than 90% since the start of the year.

MAG, which owns and operates Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands Airports, served 3.6 million passengers in January, with over 1.6 million of those passing through Manchester Airport.

The figure is more than double the 750,000 or so who travelled through Manchester in January 2022, when the Group served just 37% of pre-pandemic traffic, owing to Omicron testing requirements that remained in place for passengers travelling to and from the UK.

Across MAG, January’s passenger figures were 91% of those seen in the same month in 2019.

Elsewhere, operational performance has continued to be much-improved on last summer, with 92.4% of passengers waiting for 10 minutes or less to pass through security checks last month.

Manchester Airport has also announced the final phase of its £1.3 billion transformation programme in January. The £440 million investment will update the existing Terminal Two infrastructure, to bring it in line with the state-of-the-art extension, which opened to passengers in July 2021.

The investment is set to unlock billions in economic activity and create more than 500 jobs in the construction phase alone. A further 16,400 extra jobs will also be generated by 2040 as a result of the economic activity stimulated by the expansion of the airport and its route network. York Aviation research also shows that the Airport’s current contribution to the Northern economy of £3.5 billion could increase by nearly 80%, to £6.3 billion by 2040.