Customer volumes at Birmingham Airport (BHX) last month exceeded 2019 levels for the first time.
In October this year 1,106,000 customers travelled through the Midlands transport hub compared to 1,101,000 in October 2019. Tom Screen, aviation director for BHX, said: “Last month our customer numbers were 100.4% of what they were October 2019 - officially the first month we’ve surpassed pre-pandemic numbers, having been hovering in the high nineties for quite a while.
“It’s good to hit this milestone as we continue to recover from Covid. With more routes, more airlines and more based aircraft, it’s no surprise we’re seeing more customers.
“Meanwhile construction of our state-of-the-art new security hall is due to be complete by June 2024. This is part of £300m of upgrades to BHX planned in the coming decade. We’re on our way to becoming a bigger, better, greener airport for our customers.”
In 2019/20 BHX served more than 12m customers. Then Covid struck, reducing customers volumes by more than 90% to just 1m in 2020/21. In 2021/22, with Covid still wreaking havoc, customer volumes rose slightly to 3m.
When the Government reopened the borders in March 2022, customers surged back. In 2022/23 BHX customer volumes totalled 10.5m. This year, 2023/24, BHX expects to draw level or even exceed 2019/20 numbers.
