Success, accolades and plaudits only spur us on to be even better

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I was honoured to be named Business Ambassador of the Year at the East Midlands Business Awards last week – but in truth, I could only accept the accolade on behalf of a fantastic team. Nobody could achieve the things we have achieved this year single-handedly.

Together with my senior leadership team, we have set out clear ambitions and a plan for how to achieve them. But it’s our frontline staff who step up every day, with dedication and good humour, and deliver better outcomes for our customers, whether it’s those who are going on holiday or getting time-critical goods from around the world.

And those better outcomes undoubtedly help us to bang the drum for the East Midlands even more loudly. It’s really important that we actively engage with the regional business community, as well as with politicians such as the East Midlands Mayor, so that we’re part of the conversation about how the region reaches its full potential.

We take huge pride in the vital part we play in the regional economy, with new figures showing we contributed £6.2bn GVA in 2025. That equates to an incredible 52,000 jobs that our presence supports throughout the UK – 42% of which are in the Midlands.

Much of that is driven by our cargo operation, which continues to go from strength to strength. In September we saw yet another month of growth, handling 36,000 tonnes - a 6.3% increase on last September. So far this year we’ve handled 210,800 tonnes of cargo – up by 5% or almost 10,000 tonnes on last year.

Midlands businesses, often in the advanced manufacturing, automotive, pharmaceutical or aerospace sectors, rely on our dedicated cargo expertise for their business models to work. Logistics firms play their vital role too, with our location within the ‘logistics golden triangle’ meaning many local people work within the network we create.

And of course, plenty of local people choose East Midlands as the airport to go on holiday, with around 70% or 2.8m of our customers coming from the East Midlands. Our convenient location and offer of an effortless experience continues to appeal to increasing numbers of people. Last month’s figures are very encouraging, showing an 8% (35,000) rise in passengers on the previous September. Overall, that means we are 103,000 up on this time last year, with a total of 2.85m passengers so far this year.

We have also been ranked at the top of the Civil Aviation Authority’s customer satisfaction table, with a score of 9.10 out of 10, compared to an average of 8.3. And we recently became the first UK airport to introduce contactless eGates, enabling British passengers to clear border checks using facial recognition, speeding up queues on arrival.

All of this is on top of the huge improvements we’ve carried out to customer facilities throughout the airport, from new and refreshed bars, restaurants and shops to a transformed security hall providing quicker customer and baggage checks.

Much of this and more was recognised at the National transport Awards where East Midlands was named Airport of the Year, which is a fantastic endorsement of all that we’re doing. But there’s always room for improvement and we’ll continue to strive to make things even better.

We’re working to increase the number of people from further afield who see us as their airport of choice, as well as introducing a major European hub airport to connect passengers to the rest of the world. We’re looking forward to Paris being a new choice for Jet2 customers from next summer, and Innsbruck with TUI from next winter is also a great addition. Overall, we are looking at increased capacity on the popular routes we already serve, with almost 200,000 more seats across our network compared to last summer – a real vote of confidence in us from our main airlines in a challenging market.

On the cargo side of the business, we are more proactively working to attract new operators from around the world to make East Midlands Airport their gateway of choice into the UK, as southern airports become more congested.

We’re also taking steps to strengthen the surrounding cargo and logistics cluster into a coherent community, as well as diversifying into new areas of the air freight business. And we hope to see some movement on our cargo development sites that will help to grow our capacity and capabilities, bringing further growth for us and the wider region.

When I accepted the award at the East Midlands Business Awards, I was asked how did it all go so right. The answer is that while we are very pleased with our success so far, we’re not complacent and have lots more to achieve. We believe the airport, and the region we serve, can do better. There’s an even brighter future on the horizon.