'Quicker than Heathrow' - Birmingham Airport boss eyes bright future as plans to axe journey times into London from Birmingham move forward

Plans to build a direct link from the airport into the HS2 line connecting it with London are now well advanced, with the project to build the new station currently out to tender. 

And once complete, journey times from Birmingham to the main london interchange at Old Oak Common could be as low as 32 minutes, down from the existing 70 - meaning it could be quicker for passengers to get to London from Birmingham than from Heathrow on the tube.

Speaking to the Express & Star this week, Birmingham Airport chief executive Nick Barton says the future for the region's airport is now looking brighter than ever off the back of a record passenger year, and ahead of a huge programme of investment to boost facilities.

"It's well understood that the airport's success is driven by the economic strength of the region - obviously we're a dominant gateway for this region and the region is doing fantastically well," he said.

"We're always in a continual process of re-evaluation our forward plan for the airport. That forward looking can be tens of years and we're in that phase at the moment where we're looking at what does the growth model look like for this airport, and at the moment it's very good.

"We've got the added benefit coming our way of HS2, and we're a huge beneficiary of that.

"The station box will be here, and that can put you into London with the right connecting time in under 40 minutes. The train time from the main interchange to Old Oak Common which is the main contact point, will be 32 minutes from us which is extraordinary.

"We think we'll be in Zone 5 of the tube map - Heathrow is in Zone 6.

"That is on the way, we don't know when it's going to open but we've already transferred the land to HS2 and they're out tendering at the moment. It will really create a dynamic relationship between the aviation network of England and the South-East. It will deal with capacity constraints elsewhere, it will give people choice, it will give you a lot of options."

According to Mr Barton, around 30,000 jobs are dependent on the airport in the region, with an estimated £3,000 per minute added to the region's economy in Gross Value Added(GVA) measures. 

Now, the airport is planning a huge investment programme to ensure the arrival of the railway at the airport hub coincides with the region's 'flagship' aviation status.

And while the airport will be investing "a million pounds a week" in upgrading facilities over the next five years including adding extra capacity for stands where aircraft could be based overnight, suggestions that investment would include a second runway at the Solihull site were ruled out.

"We're investing that in asset renewal and making this airport fit for the flagship status that we've got," he said. 

"That's not a second runway or anything of that sort, the runway extension that was completed in 2014 is brilliant and it's done a really good job. We've got a fantastic runway, we don't need a second one.

"There's no need for it. What we have is technology and methodology to make what we've got work to its absolute maximum. We've got half capacity on that runway that is not yet used, by making the improvements to baggage systems, immigration systems, all the things that touch the passenger - if we in the background can get those going as well as they possibly can then you'll naturally fill up the capacity on that runway without having to go anywhere else and that's the key for us."

Instead, investment will be made adding capacity to existing operations and passenger-side facilities, which came under fire last summer following a late Government rule change which meant specialised security scanning machines could not be used to their full capacity during the airport's peak summer holiday period - resulting in long delays for passengers.

But contingency measures put in place this winter mean the airport should avoid a repeat of those scenes, ahead of what is expected to be another record year for the airport.

"Unfortunately there was a problem with the machinery that we were advised of quite late - it meant that we couldn't use the machinery having spent at that point £61m on installing and as a result we had a very challenging period of time that lasted until late August," added Mr Barton.

"We've managed to implement workarounds including two further machines which are being installed at the moment as contingencies, so that should we ever be caught out by such an imposition of a rule change like we did last time then we will be more resilient.

"We can't wait for the machines to be allowed to be used as intended, but we've put in two further machines which is another £5m worth of investment, those are being finished this week in time to be turned on for the summer.

"We've designed our operation for the summer now based around the rules carrying on as they are in a busy year. This year's going to get busier than last year, we think we'll be 5 or 6 per cent busier than last year, and last year was our record year from a passenger point of view."

Looking ahead, Mr Barton added that the airport was in a "really good place" to expand, citing the economic strength of the region and strong indicators for the aviation industry as reasons to be hopeful for the future of both the airport and the West Midlands as a whole.

"We have to be very cognisant that our growth has to be in line with where the economy is going and at the moment we're in a very optimistic frame of mind about the region and therefore the growth of the airport.

"The growth that we're seeing at the moment between 3 and 6 percent higher than it was pre-Covid so we've recovered all the Covid losses and now we're gowing on a month-by-month basis.

"It's some performance bearing in mind how impactful Covid was on operations like ours, so the fact that we're now since October better than we've been in any month in our 86-year history is pretty good.

"It's the level of connectivity that we have - we have 35 million people within a two-hour drive time, which is normal for an airport's catchment analysis, and that's more than the population of Canada that can get here easily.

"There's so much good out there and what we have to do is predict is: 'Will this carry on'? The answer at the moment is very firmly: 'Yes, it can'."