Despite a UK-wide heatwave, 3.1 per cent more passengers flew away through MAG’s three airports in July.
London Stansted experienced the highest rate of growth in the group, up 7.4 per cent year-on-year to serve 2.8 million passengers in July, its busiest ever.
The increase was driven by brand new long-haul routes to Dubai and New York, new summer short-haul links to Frankfurt, Reykjavik and Vilnius.
Some 14,000 more passengers flew from Manchester Airport in July 2018 than in July 2017, up 0.5 per cent).
The holiday trend for this summer from Manchester has been Brits rediscovering Turkey and North African destinations, after a few years of very strong growth to Spain.
This July, almost 30,000 more passengers combined flew from Manchester to Antalya and Dalaman in Turkey.
East Midlands Airport’s passenger traffic declined slightly (down 2.1 per cent) but once again, routes to Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean proved especially popular, including Corfu, Dalaman, Antalya, Rhodes and Dubrovnik, all of which posted growth, alongside the new route for this summer to Seville.
Ken O’Toole, chief executive, London Stansted Airport, said: “As the main summer holiday season firmly gets underway, July is always a very busy month for us and this year we have welcomed a record number of passengers to the airport.
“We always work hard to ensure that going into the peak season our passengers have the best possible service and this year we introduced a number of improvements to our operation including recruiting more security staff, the introduction of new Airport Ambassador roles, creating more check-in desks, improved access to the forecourt and the opening of a new 350 seat restaurant.”