Airport to front-load investment with £170m spending

Artists impression of an expanded check-in area at Birmingham Airport

Birmingham Airport is to front-load its £500m investment plans with £170m planned to be spent by the end of 2021.

It has launched a 15-year masterplan which aims to increase passenger numbers to 18m people.

The Airport remains confident that any Brexit headwinds need not cause it to change its strategic direction.

“The most significant and visible investments are already underway,” said Simon Richards, acting managing director at Birmingham Airport. “Over the next two years the departure lounge will be enlarged by 40%.”

Birmingham Airport has set out its growth plans to 2033

Other immediate plans include an extension to airport security, which will increase capacity and meet the comming requirement to process all passengers through body scanners.

Richards acknowledged that, with 20 weeks until Brexit, the situation is “tremendously uncertain”.

He said: “We can take some confidence from what happened in the financial crisis in 2008. Birmingham was extremely resilient in terms of traffic and airlines that stuck with us during those 3-4 years.”

The Airport has three scenarios for growth – a Government forecast from 2017, which projected an additional 3m passengers by 2033, its own projections, which take into account a dip in the last year and add 5m to reach 18m, and a high case that would achieve 24.2m.

“Like all great forecasts, we have a lovely straight line that goes from here to 2033, but we know it’s not going to be like that,” Richards said, as he detailed how the Airport could rein back its spending plans if demand falters.

“Our approach, getting under the skin of how we are going to do these developments, is to design them so the board can control when they release that capital spend and roll out that programme,” he said.

“We have some control and flexibility. We are very much planning on a Brexit deal that gives us a smooth transition and continuation of growth but we are very robust if that doesn’t happen to put our foot on the ball for a while.”

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