MANCHESTER Airport today outlined its vision how it can help drive the creation of Northern Powerhouse.
Speaking at the opening of the UK Northern Powerhouse Conference at Manchester Central, Manchester Airports Managing Director Ken O’Toole unveiled a new fly-through video showing how the airport will look in ten years following a £1bn investment.
Subject to securing planning permission, it will see a state-of-the-art terminal building created through the expansion of the airport's existing Terminal Two building.
A still from the fly-through footage
Ken said the project will give the whole of the North the ‘global gateway it deserves’.
But he said there are things Government can do to fully unlock the potential of the Northern economy.
The UK has the highest levels of Air Passenger Duty in Europe - more than double the rate seen in Germany. It is passed on to passengers through ticket prices.
Ken said the tax is deterring airlines from setting up as many long haul services as they are at lot the major European airports.
He said the government should not just focus on where a new runway should be built in the South East but on how spare capacity at airports like Manchester could be made use of. Manchester Airport handles 23 million passengers a year but has the capacity for 55 million. "It follows that the government should be doing far more than it is to drive the development of air services, and particularly, new long haul services across the country,” said Ken.
"One of the key ways it can do this is ensuring UK aviation taxation policy does not make UK airports uncompetitive against our European and world peers, peers that we compete with daily for the limited aircraft that airlines have to deploy.”
Ken added there is also a desperate need to get on with connecting the North better with itself.
He gave his backing by the work being done by Transport for the North to create a Northern Powerhouse Rail system, especially high speed East-west rail links.
Ken said: “Unless access between the major Northern towns and cities and assets like Manchester Airport is also improved, the North will not fully benefit from our growth.
“To draw a comparison, Gatwick Airport sits 30 miles from London and it takes 30 minutes to get there by train. Currently, Manchester is the only city you can get to within 30 minutes of Manchester Airport, which is ludicrous given how close it is to many of the great cities of the North.
"But with that sort of journey time to Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield, there would be three times as many people able to access Manchester Airport from their front door within two hours as currently do."
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