The Airport At A Glance


  • More than 22 million passengers are served by Manchester Airport every year
  • The airport offers direct flights to over 225 destinations worldwide.
  • Manchester Airport offers more UK and Ireland routes than any other British or Irish airport.
  • Manchester Airport is the UK’s largest airport outside London.
  • The airport was winner of six awards in 2006 - including Best UK Airport.
  • More than 19,000 people are directly employed on site.
  • The Airport supports 42,500 jobs in the North West.
  • Manchester Airport generated £938 million for the regional economy in 2005.
  • The airport handled 150,000 tonnes of freight in 2005.
  • More than 100 airlines operate from Manchester Airport.
  • Manchester Airports Group is the only airport group in the UK to be wholly publicly owned.
  • The Airport is committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2015.
  • One third of the UK population lives within a travelling time of two hours from the airport.
  • The airport has two runways, three terminals, 42 air bridges, 254 check-in desks, more than 500 toilets and 940 information screens.
  • Manchester Airport officially opened in June 1938.
  • Terminal 1 and 2 were both opened by the Duke of Edinburgh – Terminal 1 in 1962 and Terminal 2 in 1993. Diana Princess of Wales opened Terminal A, which is now a part of Terminal 3, in 1989.  The second runway was opened by Tony Blair in February 2001.
  • There are over 120 shops and restaurants at the airport.
  • Passengers drink roughly 1 million pints of beer, 3 million hot drinks and eat 300,000 breakfasts every year.
  • More than 1.5 million bottles of water and 40,000 bottles of champagne, 1.8 million books and over a million packs of cigarettes are bought by passengers every year in the airport’s shops.
  • Manchester Airport has three bat barns to house thousands of Pipistrelle, Brown Long-eared and Brandt’s bats. It has also built badger sets, a mammal tunnel under the second runway and has 92 ponds full of newts, toads, frogs and insects.
  • There are seven hotels at Manchester Airport.
  • Manchester Airport has eight public car parks with 15,595 spaces and eight staff car parks with 5,535 spaces.
  • More than 380,000 shrubs are planted in the landscaped areas around Terminal 2.
  • More than a quarter of a million people visit Manchester Airport’s Aviation Viewing Park every year.
  • Manchester Airport is home to the now retired Concorde 204 G-BOAC, the former flagship of the British Airways fleet.