MAN is booming. Just like the city's massive recent population growth, and
perhaps related, the airport posted a rise of almost 9% in passengers for
November against last year. The rolling annual total is now 19.6M.
Significantly, both domestic and charter traffic were up, as well as scheduled
international. And so even sectors which have traditionally been in decline have
bounced back. It's only one month's figures but overall growth at MAN is now
firmly established, with 20 million ppa likely by early next year. Aircraft
movements are flat, and cargo remains in decline, falling below 100k tonnes for
the first time in years.
Very unlikely to be anything related to city population. It is still the case that only 25% of passengers are from Greater Manchester, so an even smaller proportion from the city itself. Unless the population change is a significant net inflow into the wider catchment area, its hard to see how it would move the needle. A more rationale assessment would be to look at net passenger growth across the airports in the North West and trade off declines at other airports vs growth at MAN. In the context of a difficult economic climate, it will be interesting to see what the overall net growth is in the North West vs the UK average and other regions.