Distance: 60.0 miles
Typical journey time: around 1 hour 22 minutes
What it costs: Saloon Standard from £132.00 one way, rising to £196.00 for the MPV Executive, airport pickup fee and flight tracking included
Quoted once, before you travel, and not revisited afterwards. Licensed, insured driver. Book at least 36 hours ahead.
Minimum booking notice: 36 hours
Manchester Airport to Blackpool is 60.0 miles and takes around 1 hour 22 minutes on a typical run down the M61, M6 and M55. The price you’re quoted covers that whole distance, set on your exact pickup and drop-off postcodes and confirmed before you travel, with the airport pickup fee already folded in where it applies. Flight tracking comes as standard, and the first hour after your actual landing is free; after that, waiting is charged. Meet and greet is an optional extra: add it on the booking form and it is included in your quoted price.
There’s no direct train from Manchester Airport to Blackpool, so the realistic alternative to a private transfer is a change of train partway through, usually at Preston, with luggage and a second platform wait added to whatever the timetable itself says. A pre-booked car removes the change altogether: one driver, one vehicle, from the terminal kerb to your Blackpool address, whether that’s a hotel on the Golden Mile, a house off Lytham Road, or a venue on the seafront.
The cost is agreed before you set off and doesn’t move if the M55 is running slow into the resort or your flight lands forty minutes late. You can get an instant fixed quote on the booking form and see the exact figure before you commit.
This route carries a genuine mix: holidaymakers flying in through Manchester Airport and heading straight to a Blackpool hotel, families collecting relatives for a seaside trip, and groups heading to the Pleasure Beach, a stag or hen weekend, or one of the resort’s conference and event venues. Luggage volume varies a lot on this route, from a single weekend bag to a full week’s worth for a family of four, which is the main reason the vehicle choice below matters more here than on a short local hop.
Evening arrivals are common too, particularly across the Illuminations season from late August into early January, when Blackpool’s evening traffic builds well before you reach the seafront itself. Booking ahead means your driver already knows to plan the approach around that rather than discovering it on the night.
Business travel is a smaller share of this route than the airports closer to the city, but it isn’t zero: conference and exhibition traffic into the Winter Gardens and the Blackpool Conference Centre brings a steady trickle of corporate bookings, usually solo travellers or pairs who want a fixed cost to put on an expense claim rather than a receipt they can’t itemise cleanly.
| Vehicle | Typical capacity | One-way price from |
|---|---|---|
| Saloon Standard | Up to 4 passengers, 2 large cases | £132.00 |
| Estate Standard | Up to 4 passengers, 3-4 large cases | £138.50 |
| Executive Estate | Up to 4 passengers, 3-4 large cases, extra legroom | £151.00 |
| MPV Executive | Up to 8 passengers, 6+ large cases | £196.00 |
Every quoted price above is the finished cost, not a starting figure. Flight tracking so your driver adapts to an early or delayed landing and help carrying luggage from the car park to the boot are all part of the booking, and meet and greet at the terminal is there if you add it on the booking form. The first hour of waiting at the airport after you land is free, then waiting is charged; on the return leg, the waiting time you select when you book is already built into the price you’re shown, so a late checkout or a delayed pickup from a hotel doesn’t turn into an extra charge on the day.
Your driver is licensed, insured and professionally presented, and the vehicle itself carries a private hire licence. Booking takes a couple of minutes online: enter your postcodes, pick a vehicle class, and the price is locked in from that point.
Manchester Airport now operates two terminals rather than three. Terminal 1 has closed. Terminal 2, the enlarged “super terminal”, now handles every airline except Ryanair, including easyJet, Jet2, TUI, Virgin Atlantic, Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad and Aer Lingus. Terminal 3 is the base for Ryanair. Your terminal is printed on your boarding pass, and it decides which forecourt your driver waits at.
For a pre-booked pickup, the driver waits in the licensed Private Hire Holding Area at JetParks 1, then comes to meet you once you’re through arrivals, collecting you from the Express Pick Up zone at your terminal. That’s what makes luggage help and flight tracking standard on every booking, with meet and greet available as an option on the booking form.
If you’re being dropped at the airport rather than collected, the Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 forecourts charge from around £5.50 for five minutes up to £25 for thirty, while the Free Drop Off at JetParks 1 costs nothing, with a free 24-hour shuttle to the terminals taking around 6 minutes. Those charges change from time to time, so treat them as indicative and check the airport’s own page for current figures; your fixed transfer price already covers the driver’s side of this regardless of which forecourt is used. Full detail: Manchester Airport’s pick-up and drop-off page.
On the road, the route runs the M56 and M60 out of the airport onto the M61, then the M6 and M55 into Blackpool. There’s a bridge repair scheme on the M6 between junctions 32 and 33 near Broughton and Barton, just north of Preston, with a temporary lane closure in place and some overnight full closures on Thursday and Saturday nights. Any booking that runs the M6 past Preston is checked against the live restriction before departure. Separately, from late August through to early January the Blackpool Illuminations bring heavy evening traffic to the Promenade and the approaches into the resort, so evening drop-offs in that season are set down away from the seafront crawl rather than pushed straight into it.
Whatever time you land, you can see your fare on the booking form before you commit, and the figure shown there is the one you’ll pay.
There’s no direct rail service from Manchester Airport into Blackpool. The realistic public transport option involves a change, usually at Preston, adding a platform transfer with luggage and a second wait on top of the scheduled journey time. We don’t hold a measured, door-to-door rail comparison for this specific pairing, so rather than guess at a train time we’re leaving it out; what we can say honestly is that a private transfer avoids the change entirely, which matters more on this route than most given how much luggage a typical Blackpool trip involves.
Driving yourself means paying for airport parking for however long you’re away, which on anything beyond a short trip typically costs more than the transfer fare once fuel is added, on top of leaving your own car sitting in long-stay for the duration. The fixed price on this page doesn’t move with any of that.
Plenty of the searches that land on this page are looking the other way round, for an airport transfer from Blackpool to Manchester rather than the outbound leg. The price and the road route are identical either direction, since the fare is set on the distance between the two postcodes rather than which end you start from. If you’re comparing airport transfers Blackpool to Manchester against queuing at the rank, the same certainty argument applies in reverse: a pre-booked car has a driver already allocated to your pickup time, rather than a queue to join once you arrive at the rank.
Typically around 1 hour 22 minutes covering roughly 60.0 miles, depending on traffic and time of day. We build realistic timings into every booking rather than quoting a best-case figure.
Your price is calculated by distance and confirmed before you travel, with no meter, no surge pricing and no hidden extras. Enter your pickup and drop-off on our booking form for an instant fixed quote.
We take bookings at least 36 hours before pickup, which is how we guarantee an executive vehicle and an assigned driver for every journey.
Per car. Up to four passengers travel for the same price in a saloon or estate, and up to eight in the MPV Executive, so a family or group isn’t paying a multiple of a per-head rate.
Yes, payment is taken online by card when you make your booking, so there’s nothing to settle in the car.
Not with us. We work to a minimum of 36 hours’ notice on every booking, which is how we guarantee a licensed vehicle and driver rather than taking on-demand work we can’t reliably staff.
Our fixed price starts at £132.00 one way in the Saloon Standard, rising to £196.00 for the eight-seat MPV Executive.
The route runs the M56 and M60 out of the airport onto the M61, then the M6 and M55 into Blackpool. Bookings that cross the M6 near Preston are checked against the current bridge works before setting off.
Flight tracking is built into every airport transfer, so your driver adjusts to your actual landing time rather than the scheduled one. Waiting is free for the first hour after you land and charged after that.
Yes. The Illuminations season from late August to early January brings heavy evening traffic through the resort itself, and the summer holiday weeks add daytime congestion on the approach roads. Both are planned for on the day rather than discovered on the road.
A saloon comfortably takes two large cases plus hand luggage; the estate and Executive Estate take three to four; the MPV Executive takes six or more, which usually suits a family on a week-long trip.
You can book outbound and return together or separately. Booking both at once means both prices are fixed and confirmed in one go, rather than something to arrange once you’re already at the resort.
Distances © OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database Licence.
