Come fly with me: 31 nostalgic photos taking you back in time at North West's busiest airports

People across the North West and beyond will be familiar with Manchester Airport and Liverpool John Lennon Airport, with many jetting off from there on their holidays.

But they may not recognise the airports as they look in these nostalgic photos, taking you on a journey back in time from the noughties to their early years in the 1930s.

Liverpool Airport, as it was then known, officially opened on July 1, 1933, with Manchester Airport, then called Ringway Airport, launching a few years later on June 25, 1938.

They have changed a lot since those days.

In its first 14 months, Ringway Airport handled just 7,600 passengers. Today, more than 32 million passengers pass through Manchester Airport each year.

This retro photo gallery shows how the airports and the planes using them have evolved over the years.

You might remember flying from the original 1930s Liverpool Airport building before it was replaced by a new passenger terminal in 1986.

That new terminal, itself since replaced, famously featured in the early series of ITV’s Airline documentary series, while the original building became the Crowne Plaza hotel.

You may recall the huge glass chandeliers, reportedly 17ft tall and weighing two tonnes apiece, that hung majestically from the roof of Manchester Airport’s Terminal 1 for more than 40 years.

And flyers of a certain age will remember the days of Britannia Airways, before it was rebranded as Thomsonfly, or the last Concorde touching down at Manchester Airport in 2003.

These photos show those lost features, airlines, planes and events, plus many more from down the decades.

They also show some of the staff who have worked over the years at the airports, which, between them, today employ more than 22,000 people.

And they capture several of the famous faces who have visited the two airports over the years, from triumphant football stars to the Beatles, Yuri Gagarin, Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa.

Do these photos bring back any memories for you?

If you’re after another shot of nostalgia, you might enjoy this look back at popular shopping centres across the North West in the 70s, 80s and 90s.