With the wintry weather causing chaos for air travellers across Europe during the busiest week of the Christmas period, Manchester Airport has managed to remain open thanks to a combination of forward planning, new equipment and lessons learnt from last winter's disruption.
To ensure aircraft can operate safely operate a staggering 650,000 litres of de-icing fluid has been used so far and around 50,000 cubic metres of snow have been cleared from the airfield, which is enough to fill about 5000 large skips.
Over £2 million has been invested in snow clearing equipment which helped to ensure that a million square metres of airfield has remained fully operational during the big freeze. To put the size of the operation into context, each time snow is removed from Runway 1 alone, it is the equivalent of clearing 19 football pitches.
With the airfield fully operational by Tuesday, 21st December, Manchester Airport was able to help flights get away with around 600 passengers departing to Doha and Hong Kong that should have flown from Heathrow Airport. Another 1000 passengers from Heathrow will be welcomed to Manchester Airport today, so they can travel to Doha, the United States, Dubai and Hong Kong in time for Christmas.
Since Friday, Manchester Airport has accepted 26 diversions which were unable to land at airports in southern England and a further ten flights heading for Paris and Frankfurt were also accepted into Manchester.
Andrew Harrison, Managing Director of Manchester Airport, said: "It's a real achievement to keep the airport moving - all of our staff deserve a big pat on the back. We've incorporated a number of changes in light of the experiences we gained during last winter, including new equipment that enables us to clear snow in a more efficient way, increased contingency staffing levels and improving capacity to store more anti-icing fluid on site, all of which have helped to keep operations running.
"It should however be recognised that there will always be certain times when conditions deteriorate to extent that airports have no option but to suspend operations for the safety of passengers and staff."
Manchester has not totally escaped the conditions and last Friday night operations were temporarily suspended for three hours, which resulted in ten flights being diverted to other airports, and on Sunday evening several smaller aircraft had to land at alternative airports due to freezing fog.
Since Friday, over 100 flights out of around 1,600 have either been cancelled or delayed at Manchester, due to displaced aircraft and closures at other airports.
