Birmingham Airport passenger numbers top nine million
Passenger numbers at Birmingham Airport reached over nine million last year for the first time since 2009.
Latest figures reveal 9,119,709 passengers flew through Birmingham last year, a 2.3% increase over 2012.
December saw the greatest monthly increase when traffic was up 8% year on year.
The biggest growth sector in December was non-EU charter services (+12%) to destinations including Barbados and Gambia.
Airport CEO Paul Kehoe said: "2013 has been a fantastic year for us in many ways. In terms of passenger numbers, we’ve seen consecutive growth in the past eight months, which has led to our best yearly performance since 2009.
"We are now looking to build on this success in 2014, which will see the opening of our longer runway and with it, the capability to serve more long haul destinations than ever before."
Scheduled routes that experienced particularly strong growth in December included Stuttgart (+89.2%), Milan (+81.7%), Chambery (+74.7%), Funchal (+65.4%), Istanbul (+45%) and Belfast (+40.2%).
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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