How Liverpool Airport is preparing for a big 2024 with Jet2 launching

Liverpool Airport is preparing for one of its biggest ever years, with Jet2 launching in 2024 and other airlines adding extra routes out of the city.

LJLA says it’s confident that in-depth forward-planning means it will be able to keep up the top passenger experience which saw it ranked as the best airport in the UK in Which?’s annual survey.

That includes investing in the necessary security equipment to be able to lift the ban on liquids over 100ml in hand luggage, hopefully by the end of February.

The Government announced it would relax rules around taking liquids and laptops through airport security from June next year, so passengers are no longer restricted.

But Liverpool Airport is on schedule to be months ahead of that timeline, which should make for a faster, less stressful process for passengers ahead of Jet2’s first flights out at Easter.

It’s just one of the steps the airport is putting into place as it looks forward to a massive 2024.

Robin Tudor at Liverpool Airport says:

“We want to have that status as the number one airport, people’s preferred choice, and maintain it going forward so a lot of planning is going on behind the scenes and has been from the moment Jet2 made its announcement.

“That includes using computer predictions to understand when people are coming through, at what times, and where more space is likely to be needed.

“When we first launched Jet2 here in May, there was a concern of ‘can the airport cope with this sort of volume of additional traffic?’ and the answer is yes.

“The reason we are confident is we’re still actually down on passenger numbers because of Covid, we’ve not yet got back to where we were, so Jet2 coming doesn’t suddenly take us way beyond what we’ve ever seen here before.

“By spring of next year we’ll probably be back to where we were pre-Covid which was just over 5million passengers. Our busiest ever year as an airport was back in around 2011 when we took about 5.5million passengers a year through the airport.

“Hopefully by 2025 we’ll be going beyond that, but we can cope with the increase because we’ve already got the infrastructure, we futureproofed that a few years ago, so we’re prepared.”

The first Jet2 flight will depart JLA at the end of March next year, as the company gears up for operating up to 54 weekly flights to destinations including the Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Greece, Turkey and Portugal.

It’s a huge coup for the airport which is predicted to see the creation of more than 200 new jobs.

Robin says having the right amount of staffing employed and ready for the busiest times has been key to JLA’s success and its popularity with passengers.

“One of the reasons we did really well in summer 2022 when others were suffering was because we started the recruitment process in the previous December, and we held a big open day in January because Easter is always the first busy period and we knew we needed to have all the staff in place for then.

“Around 2,000 to 2,500 people work at JLA but only about 200 actually work for the airport company so we work with all our partners – different companies like airlines, retailers, catering companies who need chefs and bar staff, Swissport who do the checking in and baggage handling, security companies and car hire.

“We had another open day this year because it paid dividends the previous year, so we made sure that people could see all the job opportunities and the vacancies could be filled in plenty of time before passengers were coming through the doors for that busy Easter period.”

With just over six months to go before the numbers increase, Robin says the airport is focusing on a couple of main areas.

It’s planning to expand the space in arrivals, to make it less crowded especially if flights are delayed and a few arrive at the same time.

And the new security arrangements should make a big difference to passengers’ experience.

He explains: “By next summer, all UK airports above a certain size have to change how we deal with liquids and electricals going through security. We have invested a lot of money in new security equipment which should be in place by the end of February ahead of the summer season. It will mean passengers no longer having to worry about taking laptops out of their bag or having only 100ml liquids in plastic bags.

“At the moment we still take so many liquid-based items off people, often things like toothpaste, gels and creams that they don’t always realise are liquids.

“These security changes will make things quicker and easier, and people won’t have all those hassles anymore.”