BHX 2005 Pax Figures
2005 Passenger Results
Birmingham International Airport (BIA) recorded its busiest year ever in 2005, with a record 9,388,754 passengers using the Airport over the twelve month period. This was 5.8% more than in the previous year and has been achieved following the launch of several new scheduled airlines in 2005, the introduction of new destinations and increased frequencies on key services.
The largest growth in passenger numbers in 2005 was seen on scheduled flights, which experienced an overall increase of 13.7%. This was a result of new airlines starting from Birmingham including bmibaby, Air India, Monarch Scheduled, Sun-Air (BA franchise), Germanwings, and AeroSvit-Ukrainian Airlines, bringing a greater range of destinations to Birmingham. Additionally, growth was achieved by existing airlines such as Flybe with further expansion of its network and through increased frequencies on existing routes such as New York, Dubai and Frankfurt.
Richard Heard, BIA’s Managing Director, said, “2005 was a very exciting year. New airlines and destinations have provided passengers with more choice than ever and the need for increased capacity on routes like Dubai, India and Pakistan demonstrates that demand for long-haul services from Birmingham is growing and reinforces our plans to develop facilities to cater for these changing markets.”
“The launch of our draft Master Plan for public consultation at the end of October was an important day for the Airport. We wanted to share our long-term vision for the future with the Region and all our neighbours as soon as possible. The formal consultation exercise ends on March 31st. We will then look carefully at all the responses before considering adopting a formal, new Master Plan later in the year.”
Particular growth in 2005 was seen on Transatlantic services, which increased by 26.4% overall and on flights to Asia, which grew by 22.6%. Other sectors seeing growth were non-EU countries, which rose by 16.7%, EU destinations, which increased by 13.4% and domestic routes, which grew by 13.1%.
Specific scheduled routes experiencing growth in 2005 were Nice (+1161%), Prague (+112.5%), Tehran (+104.7%), Larnaca (+92%), Faro (+49%), Milan (44.4%), Amsterdam (+27%), and Edinburgh (+21.6%).
Meanwhile, passenger numbers on charter services reduced overall by 9.8% reflecting the trend across the whole charter market in the UK as people move towards tailoring their own holidays. However, there were a number of charter destinations which experienced growth including, Egypt (+1559.7%), Bulgaria (+105.2%), Barbados (+104.9%), Mexico (+69.9%), Turkey (+19.8%), Croatia (+15.2%), France (+12.1%), Austria (+10.3%), Cyprus (+9.6%) and Malta (+7.8%).
Scheduled traffic accounted for 71.5% of the total passenger traffic in 2005, with charter making up the remaining 28.5%.
For three consecutive months during the summer, the Airport handled more than one million passengers (July, August, and September). The year ended with a record December, as 564,603 people used the Airport, an increase of 13.7% on the same period in 2004. Seven additional record months were recorded during 2005.
Other 2005 data:
• The top ten scheduled destinations in 2005 were (in order): Dublin, Edinburgh, Amsterdam, Belfast, Paris, Glasgow, Malaga, Frankfurt, Alicante, Dubai.
• The top ten charter destinations in 2005 were (in order): Tenerife, Palma, Arrecife, Las Palmas, Dalaman, Paphos, Alicante, Fuerteventura, Faro, Mahon.