'Is it going to be like how it was in 2019? No': Manchester Airport's new boss speaks out for first time over huge queues and delays

Passengers travelling through Manchester Airport will be asked to arrive three hours before their flight for the rest of the summer, the hub’s new boss has warned. Managing director Chris Woodroofe said customers had suffered a ‘poor’ experience and admitted peak-time queues would continue over the coming months - but vowed to ‘get passengers on their way’ as they head through the holiday season.

Just 11 days into the job, and following the departure of his predecessor Karen Smart, Mr Woodroofe is realistic about the challenges ahead as the hub emerges from a pandemic which has crippled the travel industry, leading at Manchester to queues which extend into car parks, missing baggage, police rescues after flights failed to take off and thousands of passenger trips cancelled by text message. But speaking to the Manchester Evening News , the former Gatwick boss also sounded a note of cautious optimism for brighter times ahead.

"It’s not going to be as good as we want it to be, it’s not going to be as good as it was in 2019 but what it will be is considerably better than it was three or four weeks ago," he said.

“On Day two I said to staff, what questions have you got for me? One of the obvious ones was ‘what attracted you to come to Manchester Airport?’ And of course it’s almost a question I was surprised to be asked in a way because you’ve got this enormous opportunity to take the airport in the North of England, my airport when I was growing up, and turn it into something that’s amazing."

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Mr Woodroofe accepts that not everyone shares his ‘positive sentiments’ about the hub of his youth,