Manchester Airports Group has just released details from its full-year results for the period 1 April 2021 – 31 March 2022 which show toe company served 20.5m passengers in 2021/22, up 225% year-on-year.
The Group – which owns and operates Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands Airports also reported massive losses of £320m for the year.
MAG is preparing for the aviation industry’s busiest period, as the peak summer season approaches. The Group expects passenger volumes over these months to increase to levels close to those seen in 2019, leading to a fuller recovery over the course of 2022/23.
MAG CEO Charlie Cornish said: “With travel restrictions in place for nearly all of the last 12 months, it was another uncertain and unpredictable year for MAG and the wider aviation industry.
“After tentative steps towards recovery last autumn, the emergence of the Omicron variant once again resulted in major barriers for people looking to travel internationally.
“MAG played an industry-leading role in highlighting the ineffectiveness of international travel testing, which helped pave the way for the removal of travel restrictions in spring this year.
“Free of those restrictions, we were confident that airlines and passengers would return quickly to our airports.
“The pace of that recovery has brought its own challenges, and recruitment has taken longer and been more difficult than we anticipated. We’ve now recruited more than 1,500 new staff across MAG since January so that we can give passengers the best possible experience this summer.
“I am pleased with the number of new colleagues who have chosen to join our airports since January, and I am sure they will all play an important role in our recovery over the coming months and years.
“With passenger levels across MAG growing quickly back towards what they were before the pandemic, I am confident in the strength of our business and the contribution our airports will once again make for their regions and the whole UK economy.”
The partial easing of testing requirements for fully vaccinated travellers last autumn saw MAG’s passenger numbers reach 58% of pre-pandemic levels in November 2021, in what the industry hoped was the beginning of a sustained recovery.
However, the emergence of the Omicron variant led to the reintroduction of extensive and costly testing requirements for all passengers, which caused MAG’s initial recovery to fall back by around 30% month-on-month in December.
The UK Government finally removed the remaining restrictions on international travel in early Spring 2022, following independent research that MAG commissioned from Oxera and Edge Health which demonstrated the ineffectiveness of travel testing in limiting the spread of new variants.
MAG saw passenger numbers increase significantly in the final quarter of the year, from 37% of pre-pandemic levels in January to 70% by March, and 82% by May, with MAG’s recovery outstripping that of others in the UK.
The scale and pace of this recovery has presented significant challenges to airports and airlines throughout the country, with operators across the sector facing staff shortages, and lengthy recruitment processes making it difficult to keep up with the demand for travel.
MAG has been working hard for several months to bring its operations back to full strength as passenger levels return to those seen before COVID-19. Since January, more than 1,500 new colleagues have taken up roles across all three airports, alongside hundreds of new staff at airlines, ground handlers and retailers operating at the Group’s airports.
As new recruits have joined MAG’s airports, waiting times at security have improved. For example, at Manchester Airport 92% of passengers in June waited less than 30 minutes to pass through security.
MAG continues to work closely and constructively with its airlines to help them deliver the schedules they intend to operate, working hard to avoid large scale cancellations.
The return of key global markets has played a significant role in driving the recovery of the sector. At Manchester Airport in particular, the resumption of services to the US in November 2021 helped to restore a series of direct long-haul connections, with services to New York, Atlanta and Orlando returning, alongside routes to the Middle East, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
On sustainability, in October 2021, MAG announced the roll out of a carbon offsetting tool in partnership with CarbonClick, alongside a long-term partnership with Fulcrum BioEnergy UK which will make Manchester Airport the first in the UK to have a direct pipeline of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). MAG was also named a Financial Times European Climate Leader for the second year in a row in 2022.
MAG marked a number of other significant moments across the past year. In July 2021, it opened its Terminal 2 extension at Manchester Airport, as part of its £1bn transformation programme. London Stansted Airport won its planning appeal against Uttlesford District Council in May 2021, increasing the airport’s maximum passenger numbers from 35 to 43 million per year and allowing it to continue to grow sustainably. East Midlands Airport has continued in its work to establish its Freeport status, which is expected to create 60,000 jobs across the region.
As the Group enters the new financial year, it also announced the launch of its new digital branch – CAVU. Formed from the union of MAGO and MAG US, CAVU will act as a travel services provider and digital agency for MAG and other aviation businesses to develop tech solutions to enhance their offering to passengers.
Cargo operations across MAG’s three airports performed well across the year, owing to businesses’ increased reliance on air freight and continued demand from consumers for e-commerce. Loads for the Group in 2021/22 were up 3% year-on-year, carrying a total of 791,000 tonnes.
