The FINANCIAL — Birmingham Airport has recorded its busiest year in history seeing over 11.6 million passengers pass through its terminal in 2016.
In total 11,639,738 passengers travelled through the airport over the course of the year giving an increase of 14.2% compared to 2015 – equivalent to just over 1.4 million more people.
The busiest month was August when almost 1.3 million passengers were recorded in a single month and the busiest day was 26 August. Over the course of the year there were six months in which over a million passengers were recorded and the airport has now seen twenty-two months of consecutive record breaking growth, according to Birmingham Airport.
December’s passenger figures significantly contributed to this total. Almost 845,000 passengers travelled through the terminal in the final month of 2016 – an increase of 23.7% year on year, equivalent to over 161,000 more people.
Both long haul and short haul sectors saw similar levels of growth in December with long haul up by 27.3% and short haul up by 23% year-on-year.
Paul Kehoe, Chief Executive Officer at Birmingham Airport, said: “Last year was very fruitful as we celebrated the busiest 12 months in our 75 year history and were crowned the most punctual airport in the world by air travel intelligence company, OAG.
“We have also seen the list of long haul global connections rapidly expand which has resulted in more than a 27% increase. Qatar Airways arrived in March offering daily flights to the state of the art Hamad International Airport in the rapidly developing capital of Doha.
“Other new carriers in the past year have included Iberia Express, Blue Air, Czech Airlines, Cobalt and Albastar who have bought low cost seats to popular short haul destinations throughout Eastern and Central Europe. We also saw the introduction of the magnificent Emirates A380 aircraft in March.
“Whilst we have experienced an incredibly exciting year, Birmingham Airport is well-placed to continue growing. We look forward to launching more routes, a wider selection of airlines in 2017 and we plan to invest £100 million before the summer in our terminal and infrastructure facilities.”
Overall in 2016 scheduled traffic accounted for 89% and charter made up 11% of the total for the year.
In December, schedule traffic accounted for 92% of flights and saw a 24.4% growth rate compared to the same month last year, whereas charter traffic accounted for 8% with a 15.4% growth rate.
Caribbean, African, Asian and Middle Eastern destinations saw the greatest increase in passengers compared to the same month last year.
Scheduled destinations with significant year-on-year passenger growth in December were Madrid (+231.5%), Poznan (+130.2%), Warsaw (+76.4%) and Budapest (+70.6%).
Charter destinations with significant growth were Sofia (+173.8%), Shannon (+104.6%), Chambery (+59.7%) and Tenerife (+26.3%).
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