The collapse of Thomas Cook only had a “limited impact” on Manchester Airport Group.
The owner of Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports reported a 19% rise in summer half-year pre-tax profits to £186.7 million on revenue up 7.3% to £540.6 million.
Total passenger numbers rose by 2% to 36.4 million in the six months to September 30 over the same period last year.
The volume was driven by record numbers of people using Manchester airport by 4.8% to 17.4 million.
This was helped by airlines taking up slots from the failure of Monarch which hit passenger levels last summer.
But Stansted’s numbers remained flat at 15.9 million passengers as the airport felt the impact of the failure of Primera Air and cutbacks by Ryanair, offset by growth from Jet2 and a new Emirates service to Dubai.
East Midlands suffered a 3.1% decline to 3.1 million passengers.
MAG said: “The collapse of Thomas Cook in September 2019 has had limited impact upon the trading results in the six months ended 30 September 2019.
“Active management of the financial position means that MAG recovered all its outstanding receivables.
“MAG is actively working to mitigate the impact of the collapse on the performance in the second half of the year.
“Jet2.com, Tui and Virgin Atlantic have all committed to extend their operations at Manchester airport since Thomas Cook’s collapse, and additional flights are also committed to at Stansted and East Midlands airport.”
Other new long-haul routes announced from MAG airports in the forthcoming months include Shanghai, Dhaka and Amritsar.
New short-haul routes and increased frequencies include Istanbul, Gothenburg, Stuttgart, Marseille, Nantes, Lille, Corvera (Mercia), Milan, Calvi, Verona and Skiathos.
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