Data relating to 8.7 million customers was accessed following a cyber attack last weekend on three major UK airports, in one of the biggest breaches in the country in recent years. Manchester Airports Group on Thursday said customers’ email addresses, phone numbers, vehicle registrations and postcodes had been taken following Wi-Fi sign-ups and car park bookings at Manchester, London Stansted and East Midlands airports. No bank or payment details were breached.

MAG, which last year served 66 million passengers, said it had “immediately contained the risk” after becoming aware of the hack on Tuesday. The National Cyber Security Centre said it was “working with Manchester Airports Group in response to a cyber incident". Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at Sophos Counter Threat Unit, said attacks of the kind on MAG were “most often ransomware attacks, where cyber criminals exfiltrate data and make financial demands not to publish it".

MAG told the FT that it had not paid a ransom and declined to comment further. MAG said no operations were disrupted by the incident, adding: “Airport operations remain unaffected and customer parking services continue to operate normally".