Birmingham Airport passenger numbers continue to soar

In total, 630,231 passengers passed through Birmingham, which is the seventh largest airport in the UK, during February. It follows on from a record-breaking start to the year in January, beating its previous record for the month set in 2008.

Scheduled traffic in February accounted for 89 per cent of the total figure, with charter passengers making up the remaining 11 per cent.

Paul Kehoe, the airport's chief executive, said it was a great start to the year.

He said: "The great start we made in 2015 has been followed up with another strong performance in February, which is a positive sign for the rest of the year.

"February was boosted thanks to families choosing to fly from Birmingham during a busy half-term week, as well as the introduction of flights to Reykjavik with Icelandair at the start of the month.

"There are many new routes, served by new carriers, set to launch in the months ahead too, including Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga with Norwegian, Barcelona with Vueling and New York JFK with American Airlines. These, coupled with the recent announcement that Birmingham will host a programme of non-stop charter flights to Beijing in the summer with Hainan Airlines, means passengers flying from Birmingham have more choice than ever before in 2015."

The airport, which handles nearly 10 million passengers a year, saw 100 per cent growth on scheduled routes to Hamburg, Oporto, Gdansk, Reykjavik and Toulouse.

The Birmingham to Waterford route, which was dropped from Flybe's schedules last month, is being taken on by Belgian airline VLM. Its four-times-a-week service using a Fokker 50 aircraft on the route starts on April 27.

The airport's extended runway was officially opened in July 2014 and inaugurated with a direct, fully-laden passenger flight to Beijing, China. The longer runway allows aircraft to now fly globally direct from the Midlands, throughout Asia, Africa and the Americas.

Over the last 10 years, Birmingham Airport has invested more than £200m to develop its infrastructure, and has the capacity to handle 36m passengers a year on its single runway.