MAG posted a 6.4 per cent increase in passenger numbers last month, as London Stansted saw new long-haul routes added to departure boards and Manchester had the busiest June in its 80-year history.

London Stansted Airport grew 11.3 per cent year-on-year to serve 2.6 million passengers in June, driven by a new daily Emirates service to Dubai on a three-class Boeing 777-ER aircraft, which saw its inaugural flight on June 8th.

This is the first time that Stansted has had a direct link to a Middle Eastern hub and the service will open up over 100 new route options for passengers wishing to travel to the Middle East, Asia and Australasia.

This, combined other new long haul links for this year, including New York, Boston and Toronto, means that Stansted is serving a more diverse network of destinations than ever before, as the airport’s new long haul services are joined this summer by even more flights to European destinations.

The European routes contributing most to the year-on-year growth at Stansted included Nice, Naples, Alicante and Reykjavik.

In the month of its 80th birthday, Manchester Airport’s traffic has now returned to growth, bouncing back after Monarch Airlines ceased operations in October 2017.

The airport grew 3.4 per cent to serve 2.8 million passengers in June, as Monarch’s runway slots were filled by other airlines including Jet2.com, Thomas Cook Airlines, TUI and easyJet.

Meanwhile, long haul routes to the Middle East (Muscat, Dubai) and to America proved popular while summer holiday destinations to watch for this season, based on passenger numbers compared with last June, are Antalya, Dalaman, Cancun and Ibiza.

East Midlands Airport grew slightly year on year (up 0.1 per cent) as the airport welcomed 560,000 passengers across the month.

The top three most popular destinations from East Midlands in June were Palma, Alicante and Malaga, while the destination that was most popular compared with last year was Dalaman in Turkey.

Charlie Cornish, chief executive, MAG said: “June’s figures demonstrate the strength of demand from both passengers and airlines to fly from our airports, and increasingly to more long-haul, global destinations.

“We have the potential to deliver many more direct long-haul services in the years to come.”