A rise in passenger numbers helped boost Manchester Airports Group (MAG) pre-tax earnings by more than 8% to £183 million for the six months to the end of September.
The group, which owns Manchester, Stansted, East Midlands and Bournemouth Airports, said its recent investments in infrastructure, in particular new security and retails facilities at Stansted and East Midlands, had paid off.
New long-term commercial agreements with airlines, including Ryanair at Stansted, have resulted in an 8.5% rise in passenger numbers to 28.1 million across all the airports, it said.
At Manchester, scheduled international traffic was up 12%, at Stansted growth was 11.9%, pushing earnings at the London airport up by £7 million to £66 million. Manchester is expected to reach the pre-recession peak of 22 million passengers by the end of March.
The number of destinations served by all four airports rose 4% to 277, including Jeddah, Eindhoven and Bologna.
