The late Easter break boosted traffic at both Manchester and Stansted airports last month, with the northern hub seeing a 17% rise in passengers and East Anglian airport an 11% increase.
Manchester handled 2.25 million passengers during April, 84,000 on Good Friday, which was its busiest day of the year so far.
The most popular destinations for passengers over Easter were Amsterdam, Dubai and Dublin as well as the Spanish holiday favourites of Tenerife, Alicante and Malaga.
Stansted handled over 2.1 million passengers during what was its busiest ever April, after April 2006.
The record monthly total was boosted by the first full month of airlines’ summer schedules and a number of new route launches, average load factor of 89.7% – and the later Easter holidays.
The international markets reporting strong passenger growth compared to April last year included the Canary Islands, Cyprus and France plus destinations in both Turkey and Denmark.
