More than 1,500 'ghost flights' departed from Manchester Airport during the pandemic

More than 1,500 ‘ghost flights’ departed from Manchester Airport during the pandemic, according to new figures.

The term used for deserted planes, which travel either empty or at less than 10pc of passenger capacity, ghost flights are often both unprofitable and bad for the environment, with campaigners saying they generate millions of tonnes of unnecessary greenhouse gases every year.

From Manchester Airport, 1,548 such aircraft departed between March 2020 and September 2021.

READ MORE: Council spends £200m on tackling climate change – but the city's still off track cutting carbon emissions

Equating to nearly 130 a month, that’s the second highest number of 'ghost flights' after Heathrow.

It follows a report from the Manchester Evening News in February last year that flights were continuing to operate from ‘red list’ countries like Dubai and Abu Dhabi - despite Manchester not being among the five designated ‘quarantine ports’ at the time.

It emerged that these flights were in fact arriving passenger-free to pick up those people who had a valid reason for outbound travel, which at the time did not include holidays.

In normal times, airlines must stick to at least 80pc of their departure slots from airports in order to retain their schedules.

During the pandemic, as passenger numbers plummeted - at one point Manchester Airport was processing around 5pc of its usual traffic - the Government suspended this requirement.

It was only in October, outside the time period of the data set, that the requirement for airlines to fill departure slots was increased to 50pc, with a further increase to 70pc due at the end of March.

Despite this, there were a total of 14,472 ghost flights during the period from all UK airports.

Pete