August proved to be an exceptionally busy month for Birmingham International Airport with over one million passengers using it to escape the British summer.
The airport handled a total of 1,005,484 people in its two terminals, an increase of 2.2 per cent on August last year and the first time it has broken the million passenger milestone since September 2005.
This included 658,902 scheduled passengers and 346,582 charter passengers.
Joe Kelly, acting managing director of Birmingham Airport, said: "The travel industry as a whole has faced many chal lenges over the last two years, however these August figures are great news and hopefully show the start of a positive trend.
The increase in passenger numbers can probably be attributed to holidaymakers wanting to escape the bad weather here, with people taking advantage of our new routes and using their regional airport as their business and leisure gateway."
Birmingham Airport has introduced 19 new routes so far this year and boasts a varied portfolio of sun destinations including long-haul to such as Cancun, Dominican Republic, Dubai and Orlando and medium and short-haul to Sharm El Sheikh, Turkey, Cyprus, Spain and Portugal.
Charter routes that experienced the highest growth included; Malta (+72.3 per cent), Turkey (+15.8 per cent) and Eygpt (+12.5 per cent). In August, growth was achieved on non-EU routes of 5.2 per cent and EU flights of seven per cent. Long-haul routes to Asia saw a positive increase of 7.5 per cent.
Scheduled routes that experienced growth in August includes: Aberdeen (+168.9 per cent), Palma (+157.9 per cent), Murcia (+72.3 per cent), Barcelona (+38.6 per cent), Zurich (+17.9 per cent), Krakow (+14.9 per cent), Faro (+11 per cent), Alicante (+10.6 per cent), Bordeaux (+4.9 per cent), Malaga (+9.7 per cent), Mahon (+10 per cent) and Cologne (+18 per cent).
