Manchester Airport UK
General Information.
Airport code: MAN
Tel: +44 (0)161 489 3000
Distance: 16km from Manchester.

The Manchester International Airport provides a wide range of facilities including those for business, children and the disabled. Public transportation to and from the airport is reliable and frequent with a choice of trains, coaches, taxis and car hire. From 1975 until 1986, the title Manchester International Airport was used. It is located on the boundary between Cheshire and Manchester in the metropolitan county of Greater Manchester.


It has two parallel runways, three adjacent terminals, and a railway station. The airport is owned by the Manchester Airport Group which is controlled by a group of ten local authorities in the Greater Manchester area. MAG owns several other UK airports; East Midlands, and the smaller Hurn, Bournemouth and Kirmington, Humberside. Most other major airports in the UK are owned by BAA plc. Those wishing to drive to the airport will find it easily accessible and well sign posted from the access roads. The airport offers a range of short and long stay parking and 24 hour petrol stations.Voted European Airport of the Year in 2001, Manchester Airport is served by around 95 airlines flying more than 19.5 million passengers to over 180 destinations each year.
The wartime years from 1940 to 1945 saw 60,000 of Britain‘s airborne forces troops training there. With another prominent plane maker A.V.Roe setting up shop alongside Fairey some of the most famous military aircraft of the conflict was manufactured in Manchester. It was here that the prototype of the Lancaster bomber made its first flight. Peacetime brought new opportunities for civil expansion and in 1949 part of the old Parachute School cast off its past and was converted to handle an increasing number of passengers. Two years later the runway was lengthened and in the 1960′s an imposing terminal building with air traffic controls facilities and two passenger piers were added. That development heralded two decades of burgeoning traffic and growing facilities which included a third pier, new departure hall and a longer runway.In the 1980s the airport was designated an International Gateway handling direct long-haul international flights. A second international passenger terminal and direct rail and motorway links have made the airport increasingly accessible to a wide catchments area.

No comments »

Manchester & the Industrial Revolution.
During the Industrial Revolution the powerhouse that was Manchester became the hub of a wide network of many small Lancashire townships – “little Manchesters” as they were sometimes known – towns that serviced the city’s massive cotton industry. Places like Blackburn, Burnley, Bolton, Wigan, Salford, Oldham and Rochdale, (to name but a few) sent their woven and spun produce to the Exchange in Manchester and from thence to the world via the newly created Manchester Ship Canal, and received raw materials which were distributed out from the city and its well established system of canals and railways.Steam power drove the Victorian city, with water from the many local rivers like the Irwell, Medlock, Irk and Tame, and coal from Worsley via the Duke of Egerton’s Bridgewater Canal to Castlefield, or other coal pits around Wigan.The City of Manchester and innumerable small satellite towns and villages surrounding it saw the rapid growth of factories manufacturing merchandise for cotton weaving and spinning, dyeing, fulling and all apects of the textile industry. Manchester was nicknamed “Cottonopolis” where ‘King Cotton’ ruled. Even today, Manchester is marked by its many fine surviving warehouses (now mostly hotels and executive apartments) and mills (now frequently relegated to small industrial units). It held onto its reputation as the prime source of world textiles until its decline in the 1950s, when cheaper foreign imports sounded the death knell for the region’s pre-eminence.
Greater Manchester
In the 1970s, Greater Manchester was born – a still controversial grouping of 8 boroughs and 2 cities, which were subsumed into one large administrative connurbation, the Metropolian County of Greater Manchester. Two of these, Tameside and Trafford, were newly created (again, quite controversially) for the purpose, while other former County Boroughs like Bury, Oldham and Rochdale (in Lancashire) and Stockport (in Cheshire) lost their administrative independence to a large degree to the new Metropolitan County. This “county” still produces more than half of Britain‘s manufactured goods and consumables, though manufacturing continues its steady decline. Greater Manchester is a big place. While 2.6 million people live within its actual boundaries, over 7 million others live in the wider region, making it second only to London in Great Britain. For 11 million people living within 50 miles of the City of Manchester, it is the place where they come to work, or to shop or to visit the many attractions and entertainments which only a large dynamic city such as this could hope to offer.

No comments »