Birmingham Airport underlines its importance to region’s transport infrastructure

Birmingham Airport has underlined its importance to the region and its transport infrastructure by announcing two years of continuous record monthly passenger growth.

Added to this, February became the hub’s busiest month on record.

The announcement could not be better timed, with the strong connectivity and transports links offered by the West Midlands forming a crucial part of the Midlands Engine Strategy currently being promoted at the MIPIM property exhibition in Cannes.

During February, the airport handled 807,733 passengers – 83,000 more than the same month in 2016, an increase of 11.5%.

Demand increased on both long and short haul services with very significant growth again recorded on long-haul flights – up by a healthy 21% compared to the same month last year.  The number of passengers taking short haul flights grew by more than 9% year-on-year.

Airport CEO Paul Kehoe, who is attending the MIPIM event, said: “To record a whole two years of monthly back-to-back record breaking figures is an excellent achievement and makes Birmingham one of the UK’s fastest growing airports.

“This unprecedented demand, particularly to long haul destinations, goes hand-in-hand with the booming regional economy and means this airport is becoming increasingly attractive for airlines to serve the Midlands market.

“Only last month we broke the news that one of the world’s most recognisable brands, British Airways, will be returning to Birmingham Airport from this summer, becoming the tenth new airline in the last year to launch.”

He said the airport’s focus now was complete an £100m package of development works in time for the summer season, which is expected to be the airport’s busiest ever with the launch of 15 new services by holiday airline Jet2.com.

“Later this year we will consult on our Master Plan to scope out how the current site can be maximised and the benefits of HS2 realised,” added Mr Kehoe.

The airport is the site of the HS2 Interchange station, which is likely to be one of the busiest hubs on the £56bn rail line once it is operational.  

Scheduled traffic at the airport in February accounted for 91% of the total, with charter passengers making up the remaining 9%.

Scheduled traffic overall grew by 11.7%, with significant year-on-year growth to Madrid (+292.5%), Cape Verde (+103.2%), Berlin (+39.1%), Salzburg (+34.8%) and Budapest (+30.4%).  

Charter traffic experienced 7.5% growth with significant expansion on services to Hurghada (+169.4%), Malaga (+31.7%), Verona (+21.9%) and Alicante (+14.7%).

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