It was once a source of pride... but now that's finished - so why is Manchester Airport in such a mess?

When the coronavirus pandemic first hit two years ago and global travel became a distant memory, there were genuine fears for the future of Manchester Airport, whose growth over the last 50 years is perhaps the most obvious incarnation of our city's ambition and renaissance. Thousands of flights were grounded, staff were furloughed and large parts of the airport were virtually mothballed.

Passenger numbers plummeted from 80,000 a day to just a few hundred, a decline which would eventually lead to more than 2,000 redundancies among both MAG employees and those working for outside agencies. With the turbulence of lockdown rattling the travel sector, just two months after we were all ordered to stay at home the ten councils of Greater Manchester agreed a multi-million pound loan to save the airport.

It was a package worth £260m to help Manchester, Stansted and East Midlands airports which are all owned by Manchester Airports Group (MAG). As shareholders in this group, the ten Greater Manchester councils have all profited from the airport's success - to the tune of more than £600m in the five years before the pandemic brought the pay-outs to an abrupt halt.

But the ravages of Covid, followed by a rapid recovery, mean those taxpayers are no longer benefitting from the annual windfalls are among the same people reporting chaotic experiences at the besieged airport in a series of stories to the Manchester Evening News. As passenger numbers surged back to up to 60,000 a day, there were reports of huge queues for check-in and security snaking out from terminals into car parks, with some holidaymakers ultimately missing their flights.

Baggage delays and crowded check-in halls, run by outside agencies, were the subject of more