London Stansted’s long-haul routes drove the airport to its busiest ever month in August, with 2.98 million passengers travelling through the airport.

Stansted’s successful growth led MAG, the UK’s largest airport group, to grow by 3.2 per cent year-on-year in its busiest month of the year, to serve 6.7 million passengers in the month.

The growth moves MAG within touching distance of serving a milestone 60 million passengers in a year for the first time in its history, a mark it expects to pass in September.

Internationally, the most significant contribution to this growth at Stansted was the new daily route to Dubai with Emirates, with new routes to New York and Toronto with Primera Air also adding significant numbers of passengers compared with last year.

Manchester Airport’s performance was broadly flat year-on-year (down 0.6 per cent), despite the fact that this time last year, Monarch were running a full summer programme from the airport.

The airport’s successful backfilling of Monarch’s slots demonstrates the ongoing appeal of the airport to a range of international airlines and has led to very strong growth in Eastern Mediterranean and North African destinations, with 24,000 more passengers travelling to the Turkish destinations of Antalya and Dalaman alone compared with last year.

East Midlands Airport also saw impressive growth to the Eastern Mediterranean area, with eight of the top ten growth destinations from the airport being in this region.

Ken O’Toole, chief executive, London Stansted Airport, said: “Strong collaboration with our airline partners has been needed to contend with air traffic control restrictions, industrial action and extreme weather, and allow us to welcome a record number of passengers to the airport and pass the 27 million passengers a year milestone for the first time in the airport’s history.”