Birmingham: General Airport Discussion & Updates

[Ray Finkle]

Purely a wish list.

I'd like to see MAD and AGP carry on through winter along with new services to LPA and TFS, the addition of OSL would give connections onto their whole network.

Next year I'd like to see Stockholm at a couple of times weekly, a new service to ALC and the return of BCN. If we could also get a based aircraft doing the likes of PMI, FAO, IBZ, ACE etc... it should build up a decent customer base and establish the brand in the region. Hopefully then they could get a little more adventurous and try a couple of city destinations and less popular Med routes. If they could also secure a deal to do some flying for the likes of Thomas Cook ex BHX then that would really help things along.

Of course I'd desperately love them to add MCO but they've said no regional long haul until 2017 and then would BHX be top of the list?

 

[andrew.clarkson]

Hi there ray and everyone, on a different note although, about December last all at dubai airport were celebrating about overtaking heathrow with more passengers last year, but looking at the figures more closely, heathrow handled one million seven hundred thousand more passengers last year than, even on,the aircraft movements as well, so I think that some at dubai airport completely got it wrong by a long way..andyc

 

[jfy1999]

Hi Andy.
Heathrow still handles more passengers overall, but Dubai was celebrating overtaking Heathrow in international passengers handled only. Dubai has no domestic services at all, while Heathrow has several, so Heathrow stays ahead in total pax figures.

 

[andrew.clarkson]

Hi there ray and all, when you mention that an aircraft has gone tech, what do you mean..sorry I may be thick..andyc

 

[thunderchild]

when you mention that an aircraft has gone tech, what do you mean

A term for suffering a "technical problem" or more basically, "broke-down".

 

[andrew.clarkson]

Hi there ray and all, if Birmingham airport charges 4,000 pounds per aircraft to land and take off and 11.40 per passenger to land and take off, how much does heathrow charge. Is it dearer of cheaper than Birmingham....andyc

 

[Ray Finkle]

The LHR charges are HERE and they look to be quite a bit more than BHX.

Those are just the published fees. I think it's already been said that each individual airline will have it's own agreement with the airports they serve which could be considerably different to the published charges.


Changing direction there's a nice article about Birmingham on an Australian travel blog, this is printed under 'getting there'

British Airways, Qantas, Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Cathay Pacific operate frequent flights between Sydney and Melbourne and London. Birmingham Airport is serviced by many low-cost carriers.

Nothing about flights into BHX via a hub. This is the battle regional airports are facing when the rest of the world sees the UK as London.

Nice article though: http://www.traveller.com.au/birmingham- ... ool-133yx7

 

[Brum X]

I also read somewhere that Air India picks up a few passengers for its onward connections to SYD and MEL as well as Emirates via DXB

 

[Ray Finkle]

Yeah they seem to do pretty well with BHX-AUS which I gather was a surprise.

Air India will be splitting their AUS services to 4x weekly DEL-SYD and 3x weekly DEL-MEL, rather than the daily DEL-SYD-MEL-DEL route they have now.

 

[Ray Finkle]

I love the new pictures on the BHX website celebrating the launch of JFK and third daily DXB.

The New York picture below is courtesy of BHX Twitter, Dubai is just below it on the website.

https://birminghamairport.co.uk/

Only two days to go 🙂

 

[Brum X]

Yes, im looking forward to seeing AA back at BHX, might even pop down to the airport over the weekend if the weather is good to see them. I wonder if the first flight will be in there new 757 livery or do they still have some 757s in the old livery ??????

 

[jfy1999]

I go on FR24 regularly and I haven't seen any in the old livery for a long time.
I hope they keep at least one as a "retro" plane as the bare metal look is immortal.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Arrivals for tomorrow morning:

Ashkhabad Turkmenistan Airlines T5 425 04:10
Orlando-Sanford Thomson Airways TOM 631 06:00
New York (jfk) American Airlines AA 130 07:00
New York (jfk) British Airways BA 1590 07:00
New York\Newark United Airlines UA 027 07:10
New York\Newark Air Canada AC 2563 07:10
New York\Newark Lufthansa LH 7639 07:10

 

[Ray Finkle]

FR24 is showing N186AN as operating tomorrow's flight which I believe is in the new livery.

Out of interest FR24 also shows the flight as having an Iberia flight code (IB7134) which isn't shown on BHX arrivals.

 

[nwoody2001]

wont the new Emirates service also be arriving circa 9:00am when launched in august?

 

[Ray Finkle]

Emirates lands at 07:50, it was pushed back from 07:05 which most likely gives more breathing room for stand allocation.

Over the summer there is also the Hainan 767's on Monday's and Friday's and the Air Transat A330 every Wednesday 🙂

 

[Ray Finkle]

Winter 15/16 is starting to look healthy over the previous winter season.

We've already seen increases from Monarch and Ryanair, Emirates will be 3x daily, Icelandair will be in their first winter and are increasing from Feb, Turkish will be 12 weekly and there has been a small increase from Easyjet. We'll have the first winter season with American at 5x weekly until mid Dec then back up to daily, Vueling continue BCN into winter and we'll have the five routes from Norwegian.

The negatives are Shannon will be down from 14x weekly to 6x weekly, Waterford is on a smaller aircraft and we know about the Flybe route cull.

Still to come. Flybe haven't released winter yet although the way the are at the moment I wouldn't be surprised to see routes added, routes chopped or just nothing at all? We don't know what Vueling have planned for BHX (if anything at all) but if they are to add something I'd imagine it would be next summer? We also have the potential of a cut from Air India. Lots of if's, but's and maybe's on those though 🙂

 

[thunderchild]

Remember BHX for AI is all about ATQ, DEL is just an an added bonus!

This time last week we thought it could be all over for Norwegian but what a difference a day can make - I realise that following BHX is a bit of a roller coaster ride but I do feel there are more ups than downs at the moment (let's just hope I haven't jinxed it).

Also, I wonder how close that 10 million mark is now?

 

[jfy1999]

If we do make the 10 million mark I think it will be by a very narrow margin because of the routes we lost in 2014.

 

[Ray Finkle]

In that interview David Winstanley said that if the current rate of growth continues BHX should see the rolling pax total exceed 10 million in May.

2015 should see 10mppa in the calender year, what would help massively is a bit of good news from Flybe for winter.