Birmingham Airport: Site to handle more passengers and flights in 2024 - with new routes from EasyJet, Ryanair and Jet2

A UK airport is expected to take off in 2024 handling more passengers and flights. In 2023 Birmingham Airport handled 11.5 million customers and the new flights will help make progress towards the target of hitting 18 million by 2033.

More holiday flights will operate from the regional airport with many new destinations being added by European airlines. Among the airlines seeing the potential of Birmingham is Turkish Airlines which will offer 18 flights a week to Istanbul from this summer.

EasyJet will also be opening its new three-aircraft operation from Birmingham Airport from 18 March. Basing the aircraft there will enable the airline to further expand its Birmingham network with 16 new routes. The airline’s first base opening in the UK in over a decade will create around 100 direct jobs for pilots and crew and more than 1,200 more indirect jobs.

Jet2 based a 14th aircraft at the airport last year and has promised a 15th next summer. Additionally it has already announced two new destinations to the island of Symi and Athens Coast in Greece for next summer from the airport. In total, Jet2.com will operate more than 50 weekly services during peak periods to Greece from Birmingham. It will also operate scheduled flights and holidays from Birmingham Airport to Morocco for the first time in 2024.

Ryanair is also expected to operate more flights from Birmingham Airport. The Ireland-based budget airline now has six of its jets based at the airport and a seventh is being added this summer. Its winter 2023-2024 schedule for Birmingham totals 34 routes, including four new routes to Budapest, Girona, Seville, and Valencia as well as increased frequencies on another 11 routes, including Krakow, Malta, and Turin.

The airport is more than halfway through £10m of aircraft stand upgrades to make its operation more efficient and reliable for customers. The project is making all the stands on the airport’s South Terminal capable of accommodating Airbus 321 and Boeing 737 aircraft, which many airlines use and is due to be complete in the summer. Nick Barton, the airport chief executive of BHX, added that the airport is looking forward to unveiling its “£50m new security hall, which will vastly improve the experience for customers, switching on our new customer website, and generating 20 per cent of our electricity needs from a 12,000-panel solar array currently under construction.”