MAG continues summer growth into September

- MAG passes the 54m passenger barrier for the first time

- London Stansted sees over 24m passengers in 12 months for only the second time in its history

- Manchester grows 9.9% year-on-year following busiest summer ever

Growth at MAG airports continued into September as the group continued to benefit from spare capacity on its runways to grow ahead of the market.

London Stansted took advantage of strong demand in the London market to handle 24 million passengers in 12 months for the first time since the financial crash and for only the second time in its history. The figure of 24,009,348 is only 6,000 passengers short of the previous 12 month record set in October 2007.

Stansted is taking advantage of other runways in the South East now operating at full capacity. The airport, which is second globally only to Munich Airport in the number of different European destinations it offers, boosted its role as a key hub of European connectivity post Brexit. Traffic to Germany was up 6.3%, Italy up 14.2% and Greece up 8.3%. Eastern European destinations also performed very well, with growth to Croatia (+18.7%), Romania (+39.4%) and Slovenia (26.8%).

At Manchester, 2,671,199 passengers travelled through the airport last month, an increase of 9.9% on September 2015. That means that Manchester's 12 month rolling total now stands at 24,846,962 passengers. Numbers were equally impressive across the airport's short haul and long haul network. Key late summer short haul markets like Spain (+20.7%), the Canary Islands (+24.5%) and Cyprus (+12.7%) all continued to grow well, while long haul traffic was also strong across business and leisure destinations - including a 9.3% growth to the USA. The influx of students coming in to universities across the north was also a driver of September's growth.

East Midlands Airport also grew by 6.4% as 538,000 passengers flew from the airport in September. A highlight was a 47% year-on-year growth to Dublin as passengers took advantage of connections from the Irish capital.

Runway capacity also benefited MAG's Cargo business which saw increases in tonnage across its principle three airports. The fastest growth was at Manchester, whose new long haul connections to destinations such as Beijing boosted bellyhold volumes, while East Midlands and Stansted both grew to over 29,000 tonnes and over 21,000 tonnes respectively.

Stansted Airport's CEO, Andrew Cowan, said:

"Stansted Airport has enjoyed a period of rapid and sustained growth in passenger numbers under the ownership of MAG and through long-term deals with key carriers such as Ryanair.

"September was once again a strong month of passenger growth, despite the end of the traditional school holiday getaway, with volumes up nearly seven per cent over the same month last year. This helped push the annual total close to Stansted's all-time passenger high, a record I'm sure we will pass during this month."