East Midlands Airport (IATA: EMA, ICAO: EGNX) is an airport in the East Midlands of England, located at Castle Donington in North West
Leicestershire. It lies between the cities of Derby 7 nautical miles (13 km; 8.1 mi) southeast, Leicester and Nottingham, which are all within
a 20 mi (30 km) radius of the airfield.
It mainly serves the counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Staffordshire and South
Yorkshire. Passenger numbers peaked in 2008 at 5.6 million, but declined by 25% to 4.1 million in 2012 making it the 13th busiest airport in the
UK by passenger traffic. A major cargo hub, it was the second busiest UK airport for freight traffic in 2012.
East Midlands Airport has established itself as a hub for low fare airlines such as, Jet2.com and Ryanair and tour operarors like Thomson Airways
which serve a range of domestic and European short-haul destinations. It is also a base for BMI Regional, Flybe, Monarch and Thomas Cook Airlines.
Ryanair has also expanded its East Midlands base with a series of new routes and frequency increases on existing routes. They will now serve the
airport with 7 based aircraft, 40 destinations, over 320 weekly flights and roughly 2.3 million passengers a year, making it the largest airline
at the airport, accounting for about 50% of passenger traffic with East Midlands now being Ryanair's third largest UK airport after London-Stansted and Manchester.
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