Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder.

January is a month when you get lots and lots of announcements from lots and lots of companies in the

travel and transport realm saying they've just had a record year. For instance, Heathrow Airport

has done that with the highest number of passengers

ever, but Soto has a slightly smaller airport. And that's what I want to talk about today.

It's Liverpool John Lennon Airport. The chief executive, John Irving, is kind enough to talk

me through the numbers. And John, first of all, the headline,

how was 2025 for Liverpool John Lennon Airport? It's been a really positive year at Liverpool

airport, a record number of passengers through the terminal, which is amazing to say,

certainly looking back to the pandemic and where every airport was.

But for us, last year was the best ever year at the airport, but not just in terms of numbers,

but I think in terms of experience and the network that we're providing for the Northwest.

I calculate over 15,000 passengers on the average day.

One element that really intrigued me was that wasn't beating your year in

2024 or indeed 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. Your actual best year before that was in

2007. So with the greatest of respect, what's been happening between 2007 and 2025?

Did it all go a bit wrong?

We had a really strong year back in 07 or 8, and that was, I guess, a different time in the industry.

And I think we were the home of EasyJet in the north and northwest and Ryanair as well and had big programs.

They still have very similar

programs here to be honest, but we did have a downturn for a period of time. I think we dropped

down to about four million passengers. And then back in 2017, on which we started to build back

...