Birmingham
 

Forgive me if there is another Birmingham topic open somewhere, the only one I can find is on P8 and it is now closed.

Anyway...does anyone know the background to the threatened industrial action over Xmas. It seems that AMICUS want two 'unfairly' sacked security staff reinstated. BHX are sticking to their guns.

The TU will go to non binding arbitration, BHX will go to binding arbitration.

Apparently those sacked had an unblemished record and were being covertly filmed according to the Union (not a fair cop ?).

I remember some time ago there was a story about security staff being sacked for (alledgedly) sleeping on the job. Were these the guys ?

Surely in this day and age if someone has been unfaily sacked they can appeal against dismissal and if unsucessful go to a tribunal and ask for re-instatement through the legal process ?

Why the need for a strike ?

2 security guards filmed with a handcam from the car park allegedly sleeping whilst on duty.
This is not the 1st time strike action has been threatened at BHX and it's always at peak time i.e. xmas

I understand if it goes ahead it will not be a mass walkout for 24hours but more shorter periods i.e a few hours at a time etc....

On the radio yesterday it said that all "options had be exhausted" with BIA and that this was the next course of action.

Carrying on with BHX developments...

I've heard that due to the political tensions between the UK & Iran, Mahan Air are currently looking at their schedules. Could be the next route BHX loses?

Haven't heard anything about Austrian Airlines for a while (was 'rumoured' to be looking at a VIE-BHX service using an Austrian Arrows Fokker 100) but both Finnair (Helsinki-Brum with EMB170) and LOT (Warsaw-Brum with Emb145/170?) could be starters next year?

WNC

I wouldn't be supprised if Mahan Air doesn't cease serving the BHX-Tehran route.

Taking Blairs & Bush stance over Iran, it could become quite a hot potato

Fried Chicken

Master plan set out today
 

400m runway extension a third terminal and the proposed 2nd runway set out in Birminghams master paln launched today. See bhx.co.uk
Daza

The staff involved on this occasion were Ops staff.
Simple question: do you want the staff you employ and pay to inspect the operational areas and safeguard an aerodrome to be less than responsible.....

OK, so at last we have a few more figures.

£120m for a runway extension sounds worth talking about; if that opens up more long haul flights then bring it on.

The total development plan figure was quoted previously as £2.5bn, now down to £1.5bn. I can't imagine the terminal would be more than about £80m (still 10x Cov's), so that's still £1.3bn for the second runway & associated taxiing.

I am waiting for a coherent CoBa on this - any suggestions?

A couple of weeks ago, we saw how Brum couldn't shell out £30m to buy Cov - they should have done it when they had the chance in 1993, when they would have probably got it for £1!

Now they are asking neighbouring councils to help them fork out for the runway extension.

So could someone please tell me where the funding would come from for the second runway? It is starting to look almost as ridiculous as the Rugby proposals!

Rumours around about Germanwings switching to an airport just up the M42

FC

Here's a bit more form the Birmingham Post about that airport just up the M42" (A45 actually).

I have to say that I fully agree with the sentiment with the exception that I think that it sould happen as soon as possible. This uncontrolled development of CVT threatens a meaningful air transport strategy in the Midlands.



'Buy rival airport and flatten it' Nov 7 2005


By Campbell Docherty, Transport Correspondent

Birmingham International Airport should buy Coventry Airport, demolish it and build houses on the site instead, according to a leading Midlands business expert.

John Kirk, head of business development at the University of Central England, said the burgeoning passenger operation at Coventry was a " non-starter" but if BIA feels it is harming its own expansion plans it should simply take it over.

Mr Kirk is no stranger to airport competition - he was also the head of public relations at Manchester Airport during its own expansion in the early 1990s, when the larger airport's plans were compromised by those of the much smaller Liverpool Airport.

Last week, BIA published its draft master plan for growing to cope with threetimes the passenger demand over the next 25 years. The £ 1.5 billion plan includes an extension to the current runway, a third terminal and a second runway.

Managing director Richard Heard has repeated his concern that the existence of Coventry Airport just 11 miles away "compromised" those plans.

"I have seen this all before when I was at Manchester," said Mr Kirk. "We always had this with Liverpool who were threatening to expand all the time.

"But you need some corporate muscle to grow an airport, you need some market visibility because airlines are just going to ask Coventry why they should take a leap of faith by going there rather than Birmingham.

"It costs a lot of money to introduce a new plane to an airport - when I was at Manchester an airline introducing a new 767 cost a quarter of a million.

"But the fact of the matter is that Coventry is starting from scratch and it is going to take hundreds of millions of pounds to introduce the kind of infrastructure required to entice business from new airlines."

Last month, reports suggested Coventry owners TUI had offered the airport to BIA.

Overall, Mr Kirk believes the BIA plan is an "economic imperative" but warned the airport it would not be easy to realise.

"We went through all this at Manchester 15 years ago. It is all very familiar.

"We used to regard BIA as a bit of a minnow, with a short runway and a small terminal. We used to come down to nick their business.

"But an airport is just a piece of real estate and their real customers are the airlines. Building a runway alone costs something like £100 million. You have to raise that money from somewhere."

He added: "Expanding an airport is a bit of a catch-22 because you can only build the new runway when you have the business but you only get the business when you have the runway.

"BIA certainly has to crank up it's marketing to the world's airlines to persuade them to operate services from there rather than Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester. Amsterdam and the like."

The BIA plans were " realistic" he added because it was to attract medium haul flights.

BIA is consulting on its draft master plan and aims to present a finished document to Solihull Council next year.

If you'd bothered to look at a road map, you may realise the "airport just up the M42" is Nottingham East Midlands.

As for that article, what a load of :mad: . BHX scared of a little competition?

Busiest October on record
 

Summer Season Ends With Record Month At BIA


Birmingham International Airport (BIA) has experienced its busiest
October on record. The UK's 5th largest Airport handled 894,671
passengers during the month, a 7.7% increase on October last year.
Record passenger numbers have been prevalent throughout the summer
period, which proved to be the busiest season to date for the Airport.

BIA's Managing Director, Richard Heard, said, "Since the beginning of
May, 5.8 million people have passed through the airport and we have
experienced back-to-back record months throughout the summer season.
The passenger boom is a result of new routes, more direct
destinations, increased frequencies and easier worldwide connections,
which give Midlanders more choice and freedom than ever before.

"We are now ready for a busy winter season, which will see the
development and opening later in the year of better, more modern
passenger, retail and catering facilities to help handle these
growing activity levels in both our terminals. New and exciting long-
haul charter package holidays are now available to India, Egypt and
Mexico for winter 05/06, and we will continue to serve the 70 plus
regular direct scheduled services throughout Europe, the Indian sub-
continent and the Middle East."

Scheduled traffic grew by 22.3% overall with passenger numbers
increasing on non-EU flights which grew by 47.6%, on Transatlantic
services which were up 31.3%, as well as on flights to Asia which
rose by 27.4%. Additionally, the number of passengers using EU
services increased by 19.3% and domestic traffic grew by 18.9%.

The success of the Airport's investment in the Air-Rail Link to
Birmingham International Rail Station and new bus and coach facility
at the Airport has been seen this summer, with the proportion of
public transport now increased to 18.3%.

Growth was also achieved on a number of scheduled routes, including
Prague (+101.8%), Larnaca (+92.7%), Milan (+78.2%), Amsterdam
(+32.9%), Edinburgh (+25%), Zurich (+22%), Copenhagen (+16.5%),
Aberdeen (+12.4%) and Malta (+3.9%).

Whilst charter passenger numbers fell by 15.4% overall, several
destinations recorded an increase in passengers including Bulgaria
(+335%), Mexico (+38.6%), Croatia (+33.7%), Madeira (+24.9%), Turkey
(+23.2%), Cyprus (+14.3%), and Malta (+8.8%). This growth highlights
a general trend in the market towards alternative destinations and
away from the traditional package holiday hot-spots.

Scheduled traffic accounted for 69.6% of the total October figure
while charter passengers made up the remaining 30.4%.

BAA - October :-

Heathrow - 5,713,100 down 0.8%
Gatwick - 2,887,400 up 2.5%
Stansted - 1,917,400 up 0.6%
Glasgow - 868,400 up 1.2%
Edinburgh - 765,500 up 5.1%
Aberdeen - 262,900 up 7.1%
Southampton - 166,200 up 17.7%

Ian

Interesting to see the Milan and Prague figures. Pitty Milan is down from 5 to 2 services and Prague from 3 to 2 this winter. Just shows that full planes does not mean a profit.

Centre cities

Sorry JMC, seem to have CVT on my mind. Don't know why.

Sorry JMC, seem to have CVT on my mind. Don't know why.

Looks like we have another paranoid Brum defender amongst us:\

"I have to say that I fully agree with the sentiment with the exception that I think that it sould happen as soon as possible. This uncontrolled development of CVT threatens a meaningful air transport strategy in the Midlands."

What do you mean "uncontrolled", the airport will have a pax limit of 2 MPPA. Which for 130 seat a/c equates to an average of 2 or 3 flights per hour - how can that threaten air transport strategy?:ugh:

Why doesn't CVT have the right to develop to these levels? BHX are just trying to use the airspace excuse as a way of restricting CVT on purely economic terms.

BHX to LEI by MON starting 8 May 06.

BMI Baby Ops
 

Ops to Jersey

With in the last hour i have heard that Baby will be operating down to Jersey can any one confirm this??

This would be in direct competition with Fly may Be??.

It was the British Midland operated this route a decade or two, until they gave it up and Jersey European to it on, are they trying to claw back some of there old operations as British Airways has done in the past operating with a franchise operator.

If the information is correct does any one know the timetable??

LH @BHX
 

From 6th Jan 06 LH will add a further rotation to Dusseldorf.
DUS-BHX LH 4936 ARR 1030 CR1 12345
BHX-DUS LH 4937 DEP 1100 CR1 12345

LH will operate 11 services from BHX-Germany on weekdays.

Sky Europe to Krakow
 

Sky Europe will commence BHX - Krakow on 12th April 2006:-

NE230 Arr BHX at 07.40 and NE231 Dept BHX 08.10 - Wed / Sat Only

At last a Poland flight from BHX !

Ian

does anyone have any 'inside info' on these proposed strikes then? I believe the first one is due to go ahead on thursday after the last date was avoided.

having just spent £40 to change switch my flight to egypt to manchester, i hope it bloody well goes ahead now!!

Re Air India Flights
 

Can anybody confirm approximate load factors on the Air India flights and how well these are doing ?

Has anyone got info on where the Airlines using BHX will divert to on thursday if the planned strike happens.

EG,
Bmi baby = Nottingham East Midlands
Britannia = Coventry.

And all the rest to name but a few??

from bhx.co.uk

Strike Action Cancelled - All Flights to Operate As Normal


Birmingham International Airport is pleased to announce that the strike action planned by the trade union Amicus at the Airport has been cancelled.

The Airport Company and Amicus have agreed that the dispute will be referred to a process of independent binding arbitration.

good news,shame it had to come so close to this though!

November Pax
 

Birmingham International Airport (BIA) experienced a busy November
with 585,400 passengers travelling through. This is an increase of
10.2% on the same month last year.

Richard Heard, the Airport's Managing Director is pleased with these
results and commented: "These figures are an example of the large
array of routes that Birmingham currently has to offer. With the
introduction of our new Goa service, which is the first time that
this destination has been served from BIA, and the continuation of
Sharm el Sheikh into the winter season, plus additional capacity on
key European scheduled routes, BIA has a lot to offer to all
passengers."

Scheduled traffic grew by 13.1% overall with passenger numbers
increasing on non-EU flights which grew by 32.9%, as well as on EU
flights which rose by 8.6% and on flights to Asia which increased by
29.1%. Domestic travel increased by 14.5%, with flights to the
Irish Republic growing by 16.5%.


Growth was also achieved on a number of scheduled routes, including
Amsterdam (+34.5%), Copenhagen (+28.3%), Edinburgh (+27.3%),
Gothenburg (+16.9%), Hanover (+11.5%), Paphos (+10.2%), Frankfurt
(+7.6%) and Inverness (+7.5%).

Overall, charter passenger numbers fell by 1.6%, which reflects the
trend across the whole charter market in the UK. Despite this small
decrease, charter figures have increased on the following routes,
Mexico (79.9%), Barbados (54.8%), Turkey (40.8%) and Malta (9.4%).
BIA's charter market has seen two new arrivals for the winter season
with Goa and Sharm el Sheikh joining the Airport's growing portfolio
of destinations.

Scheduled traffic accounted for 82.4% of the total November figure
while charter passengers made up the remaining 17.6%.
The 2005 YTD (Jan-Nov) = 8,818,181 up 5.40%
The Rolling Year Ended 30.11.05 = 9,313,823

BAA Stats for November

Heathrow - 5,208,200 up 1.7%
Gatwick - 1,993,500 up 1.9%
Stansted - 1,608,000 up 2.1%
Edinburgh - 634,700 up 3.0%
Glasgow - 594,000 up 1.3%
Aberdeen - 237,400 up 9.1%
Southampton - 133,100 up 14.5%

I think Richard Heard doesn't know what he is talking about, Britannia used to fly to Goa in the late 90's tech stopping in Abu Dabi with a 762, normally G-BYAA or B.

They certainly did! It was a split load with Manch. A few Brummies booked it out of Manch & wanted to get off on the way back at EGBB - what a nightmare they were!!

But the BAL service was excellent.

Aer Lingus have announced Cork - Birmingham but will reduce Dublin-Birmingham. There is speculation that Aer Arran may pull off Cork-Birmingham as the ATR could be used for further expansion from Ronaldsway or Luton.

Austrian are apparently looking (still) at Birmingham OR London City (so presumably they have a spare DHC8). This would presumably be a scheduled flight as Austrian have some charters operating through BHX after Xmas with DHC8s

LOT are apparently looking at what expansion Sky Europe (& Wizz) do before taking the plunge with additional UK routes. I believe Malev are also keen to add further UK routes but are waiting to see what Sky Europe & Wizz announce before adding any more routes.

No new rumours/news on Finnair adding additional routes

Final snippet from me concerns Air Europa. Due to Iberia potentially cutting their short haul network, Air Europa may be looking at adding additional scheduled flights to European destinations (I believe the only scheduled UK destination AEA serve is London Gatwick)

WNC

Seems that SAS might be killing the direct BHX / ARN flights. Flight availability in May 06 has disappeared from SAS internal booking systems even though it appears in published timetables/online in places like Expedia.

Found this when trying to book some return flights to BHX.

Possibilty that SAS are having a shake up with the BHX-ARN possibly coming back as daily with a Boeing rather than the current DHC8 from the Summer

FC

Anyone know what happened to the BA Avro that apparently went off the taxiway yesturday?

Cheers, Mark

Edit: sorry didn't see the thread in rumours and news

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

Another article todat stating Jet Airways intention to launch flights to Birmingham.....

http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/...name_page.html

Does this mean they are still planning on operating A343s on the route?

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

Word is that Jet Airways have bought Air Sahara so that would leave them with a 767 or A340's. The general opinion is that the 343 would have real problems off BHX's runway and Jet are soon to aquire some 330's so maybe we'll see them. I do hope it starts and AI go ahead with their planned 6x per week.

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

True but if you read below.....

The fact that the the Chief Operating Officer states that they will start as soon as they obtain the permission suggests they may not have the said 767s or 330s in time to start the service, or maybe they will. It's all a matter of wait and see.

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

But as soon as they obtain permission they wont send a plane the next day, they'll have to put the flights on sale to get bookings, employ handling agents etc at BHX, obtain slots etc. Not sure how long it would take to set up. Wonder if anybody on here knows when the 330's are due? Whatever the aircraft it'd be great to see em at BHX although I'd love to see a 343 there.

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

I was under the impression the slots were obtained, the flight numbers appeared on the BHX Arrival/Departure boards on the 3/1/06 as that is when the service was supposed to start. AFAIK they have cancelled the January slots but have retained the February slots and onwards for now.

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

Lets hope so it'd be great to see them and we need some good news for BHX at the moment. Have you heard anymore about AI 6 x per week the last I heard it was planned for March.

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

Air India are apparently considering increasing the service to 6 per week starting in March as you said, as for anymore on that I don't know. Except that Air India have aquired another B772 (VT-AIR) which is not an 'ER' version which has already passed through BHX on the AI 187/188 service but it did encounter a few problems.

One would assume though that another B777 would allow the BHX service to be increased as the new aircraft could be used elsewhere.

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

Are you a pilot flying in and out of BHX ? If you want to find out some of the current issues affecting your airport regarding ATC then visit :

www.egbb.co.uk

the ATC website for BHX
BBB

Re: BIRMINGHAM
 

I've heard that SAS have indeed dropped the Brum-Stockholm flight & that Germanwings are to cease Cologne-Brum

Fried Chicken