Black Country Chamber of Commerce wants airports serving the West Midlands to develop a unified strategy to improve services for businesses

In response to Manchester Airport plans to expand its Fly Manchester campaign into the region, the chairman of the chamber’s transport policy group is urging the airports to talk to one another.

Colin Leighfield, who is a director of B E Wedge Holdings, said: “There are too many groups claiming to know what Black Country businesses want in terms of access to air travel. We have the CBI saying that businesses support the extension of Heathrow and Heathrow itself proclaiming that it is the nation’s asset when it comes to air travel.

“When I talk to local businesses two things become clear: firstly the lack of joined up thinking in the whole aviation debate. Businesses are fed up with negative publicity and point scoring. They want to see Birmingham, their local airport, developing a joint strategy with other airports to ensure that Black Country businesses get a better service than they have now in terms of both freight and passenger travel.

“Very few local businesses want their employees or their wagons having to drive to Heathrow or Gatwick in order to travel abroad or fulfil an export order.”

Mr Leighfield said the chamber’s new manifesto pushed for a combined UK transport infrastructure body that ensures the UK and international travel not only receives the appropriate funding it needs but that transport strategy is integrated.

“We are fed up with the ‘free for all’ approach with airports competing with each other rather than working with each other strategically to deliver a significantly improved service to passengers and freight users and then working with other transport partners to deliver an access strategy that positively benefits users.

“The Davies Commission advocacy of a hub and spoke model fails to take into account technological advances in aircraft design and can be seen, once again, as having a South East centric focus. This runs counter to the strategy for HS2 which aims, as one of its benefits, to rebalance the national economy. It is therefore nonsense to have an air and a rail strategy that contradict each other.

“The local businesses I talk to want all their services from Birmingham Airport with improved access and they want the DaviesCommission to hear that they want a strategy that supports a network of strong airports for our great cities, not a single hub,” added Mr Leighfield.

Birmingham Airport, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, had the busiest month in its history during August with more than a million passengers through its gates.

The figure of 1,104,831 passengers smashed the previous monthly record, which was achieved back in August 2008, by 2.3 percent.

It was the fifth consecutive record-breaking month for the airport, as April, May, June and July also saw previous records for the month smashed.

Last month’s passenger numbers were also an increase of 5.2 percent over August last year.

It saw a one percent increase in long haul passenger traffic with flights operating to Beijing, Dubai, Delhi, Egypt, Islamabad, Jamaica, Mexico, New York and Toronto in August.

Birmingham airport chief executive Paul Kehoe said: “Achieving the busiest month in the airport’s 75-year history is a proud moment, especially as it follows four consecutive months where passenger records have been broken.

“Passengers are voting with their feet and more and more are choosing to fly from Birmingham. The demand is clearly there, but we want to make sure that this trend continues.

“We’ve invested significantly in recent years, including a newly-extended runway, which allows departing aircraft to fly to more long haul destinations than ever before.

“The capability to serve more long haul destinations will play a key role in attracting more passengers and support future growth.”

Scheduled traffic in August accounted for 77.3 percent of passengers with charter flights making up the remaining 22.7 percent at the airport which is the UK’s third largest outside London and the UK’s seventh largest overall handling nine million passengers a year.

The airport is owned by seven local authorities including Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall.

It currently serves 143 direct scheduled and charter routes and offers an additional 279 possible connections worldwide.

The new extension to the runway at the airport was opened in July this year allowing bigger aircraft to operate out of Birmingham.

Among the airlines with operations at Birmingham are Flybe, Monarch, Ryanair, Lufthansa and Thomas Cook Airlines.

As part of the proposed High Speed Two rail project a new railway station would be built to serve both the airport and the nearby National Exhibition Centre.

- Source:   http://www.expressandstar.com