Manchester Airport Group has revealed the impact of the Covic-19 pandemic on its passenger numbers as its CEO called for a roadmap to restriction-free travel.
The group, which also includes London Stansted and East Midlands Airport, has called for greater cooperation between governments to track new Covid-19 variants, "rather than relying on costly PCR tests".
MAG has also urged the Government to create a new category for restriction free travel to aid recovery.
The calls have come after MAG’s annual passenger numbers slumped 90%, a year since the aviation industry was placed into near shutdown.
The group said that a roadmap should be based on "greater cooperation" between the UK government and its overseas counterparts, to share information about the emergence of new Covid-19 variants of concern and "eliminate the need for travellers to take expensive PCR tests" on their return.
Currently, the UK Government proposes that all passengers – even those returning from the lowest risk 'green' destinations – will have to take a PCR test, so it can gather data that will help with genomic sequencing.
However, MAG said this could be avoided if governments worked together on sequencing and sharing data on variants.
The group has revealed that it served 93% fewer passengers in March this year and that its rolling 12-month passenger total is down 89%.
In March 2019, MAG served more than four million passengers, compared to March 2021 when it served 140,000 - a 97% decrease.
Manchester Airport handled just 95,798 passengers in March 2021, 89.8% down on the 942,900 it handled 12 months earlier. At Stansted, the figure was 44,259 this March, compared with over 800,000 a year earlier – a 95% drop.
At East Midlands Airport, the airport served just 71 passengers for the whole of March this year, against 106,529 in 2020.
In March 2019, MAG’s 12-month rolling passenger numbers stood at nearly 62 million, compared to just over six million in March 2021 – down a total of 90%.
MAG chief executive Charlie Cornish said: "The UK government is among the first to have set out proposals for a system that enables international travel to resume and should be applauded for taking the lead.
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"After more than a year of almost total shutdown – and with so many jobs and so much economic value at stake – it’s really important we get people moving again once it is safe to do so.
"We now need Government to confirm the 17 th May start date as soon as possible, along with the list of countries that fall into each 'traffic light' category."
Mr Cornish added: "But the price tag attached to testing will hold back the recovery and hinder the sector’s ability to power the UK’s economic revival as a whole.
"The requirement to complete a PCR test on return from even the safest countries adds potentially unnecessary cost and the Government’s attention must now turn to finding smarter and more affordable ways to manage the risk posed by new variants of concern.
"This should be achieved by forging ever-closer partnerships with key markets and developing transparent ways of sharing data into these variants so they can be effectively contained.
"Where we can trust data from other countries, forcing people to spend money on expensive PCR tests, to obtain the very same information, would represent a colossal waste of everyone’s money.
"Covid-19 is a global problem and requires a coordinated international response, not just in bringing the pandemic under control, but in developing solutions to enable a return to restriction-free travel between countries where there is a lower level of risk.
"The Government should also be looking to the UK’s world-leading vaccination programme as a means to remove further barriers to travel to as many destinations as possible.
"Only by setting ourselves on a course back to restriction-free travel now will the aviation industry find itself on a road to full recovery, unlocking the wider-ranging economic benefits that brings."
