Most flights from region's airports have been grounded

Analysis by the BBC Shared Data Unit found nine out of 10 flights from Manchester and Liverpool have been grounded since the UK went into lockdown.

Manchester, in which Wigan Council is a significant shareholder, saw a 93 per cent drop in flights in the week ending April 19 compared to the week in March before the country was ordered to stay at home, statistics from tracking website Flightradar24 show.

And Liverpool, which is also a popular getaway point for some borough residents, saw a 92 per cent drop in the same time period.

Flightradar24 recorded 711 departures from the UK’s 10 biggest airports last week, compared to 7,865 in the week leading up to the lockdown announcement.

Many passenger planes are now carrying cargo and freight, although some airlines are also running repatriation services for the Foreign Office.

Flightradar24 tracked 50 flights at Manchester Airport last week, compared to 831 in the week ending March 22.

At Liverpool, the figures for the same two weeks were 14 and 183.

In April, the website has tracked no more than 14 flights at Manchester on any one day. That compares to between 119 and 184 a day between March 15 and March 20. At Liverpool not a single flight was tracked on April 18.

With the majority of airliners grounded, cargo companies have been stepping up their operations and using cabins as well as holds to keep up with the demand for items such as medical supplies and components to manufacture respirators and personal protective equipment (PPE).

Wigan Council, like all local authorities across Greater Manchester, is a shareholder in the city-region’s airport and has used the dividends to fund a number of large-scale projects, as well as generally boosting the coffers.

In 2018 Wigan Council’s share from the airport was £4.8m, while the 2017 dividend went to buying The Galleries Shopping Centre as part of a long-term project to turn around its fortunes.

All the data in this article was sourced from www.flightradar24.com