Manchester airport has announced an 11 per cent increase in passenger traffic in the last year, making it the second fastest-growing large airport in Europe.
Over the past 12 months, the airport has welcomed 2.7 million more passengers than the previous year, according to Airport Councils Europe.
The table shows passenger traffic and the rate of growth of airports outside of London:
| Manchester | London Stansted | East Midlands | Bournemouth | MAG | |
| Rolling 12 month total | 26,202,945 | 24,348,675 | 4,702,622 | 681,351 | 55,935,593 |
| March 2017 total | 1,917,147 | 1,877,849 | 277,497 | 41,930 | 4,114,423 |
| March 2017: % change year on year | +10.1% | -0.8% | -1.4% | +12.7% | +7.7% |
The airport continued its spate of growth with a 10 per cent increase on the number of passengers travelling in March last year.
Among airports that serve more than 25 million passengers per year, only Moscow Sheremetyevo airport is growing faster, with 34 million passengers recorded at the end of 2016.
The most significant short haul growth has been on routes to Spain, with the airport handling 1.1 million more passengers in the last year. After Spain, the next biggest short haul growth has been on routes to France, followed by Germany and Italy.
For long haul, the greatest growth has been to the US with more than 125,000 passengers travelling in the last year, followed by Pakistan and China. This is down to the launch of a number of new routes, including a direct service to Beijing with Hainan Airlines and a new route to Houston with Singapore Airlines.
Virgin Atlantic has also just launched a Manchester-San Francisco service, while Cathay Pacific has recently announced that it will increase its four times-weekly service to daily from December 1.
