MANCHESTER Airport bosses have unveiled a new CGI fly-through video showing how the airport could look in 2025 following a £1bn investment.
Manchester Airport handles 23 million passengers a year but has the capacity for 55 million
The council are next week expected to approve ten-year plans for the ‘Manchester Airport Transformation Programme’ which include a 140% expansion of Terminal 2 and the demolition of the ‘inefficient’ Terminal 1 (read more here).
Further improvements include: an additional 7,000 parking spaces; three new piers attached to the main building; a state-of-the-art new ‘baggage factory’; and an impressive ‘piazza-style’ terminal forecourt.
Forecasts predict the programme could double the airport’s passenger number to 45 million whilst also doubling the number of airport jobs.
Work is expected to begin in November 2016.
Meanwhile, airport boss Ken O’Toole has stressed the importance of the airport in the creation of Chancellor George Osborne’s mooted ‘Northern Powerhouse’, stating the transformation programme will give the whole of the North the ‘global gateway it deserves’.
Though, speaking to the UK Northern Powerhouse Conference in Manchester, O’Toole also called for Mr Osborne to tackle the UK’s air passenger duty (the highest in Europe and more than double the rate seen in Germany), which he suggested deterred airlines from establishing long haul services in the UK over European airports.
"At Manchester Airport, we have worked hard to develop a worldwide route network to be proud of,” said O’Toole. "But for all these successes, we are playing catch-up. Growth in long haul seats at our European peers has been two-and-a-half times the rate seen at Manchester Airport over the past decade."
"Just imagine the Chinese firm hunting for a location for its new European HQ, which will create 500 high value jobs. One great European city has a direct flight and one doesn't - which will it pick?”
O’Toole suggested that instead of debating where a new runway should be built amongst London's congested airports, the Government should instead be focussed on tapping into the potential of the UK's regional airports.
"Manchester Airport handles 23 million passengers a year but has the capacity for 55 million," O'Toole told the conference.
