MANCHESTER Airport is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the opening of Terminal 2 -- a development which generates more than £200 million a year for the North-west economy.
It doubled the capacity of the international gateway to 20 million passengers a year and within nine months helped the airport overtake Gatwick to become the UK's biggest departure point for package holiday traffic.
The predicted passenger throughput for T2 for 2003/2004 is 6.4 million. Plans are currently being prepared to enable the terminal to cope with an expected invasion of Continental football fans flocking to Manchester to watch the Champions League final at Old Trafford in May.
Cllr Brian Harrison, chairman of Manchester Airport plc, said that without T2 the North-west would not have been able to reshape its economy anywhere near as successfully as it had.
He said: "T2 has not only helped to bring jobs and inward investment to the region, it has also been a major net contributor to North-west plc in its own right."
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