Year on year growth at eight year high.

Birmingham Airport has recorded a 10.6 per cent passenger increase in January compared to the same month last year; the first time the airport has experienced double digit growth since December 2005.

In total, 549,489 travellers passed through the airport during the first month of the year, and long-haul traffic saw a major rise of 23.8 per cent compared to January 2013.

Significant growth was also seen on a number of scheduled short-haul services, including Chambery (+233.6%), Fuerteventura (+175.6%), Waterford(+127.9%), Arrecife (+123.2%), Madeira (+113.3%), Stuttgart (+106.9%), and Milan (+73.8). Charter flights experiencing double digit growth in January were Barbados (+55.1%) and Mexico (+17.9%), as holiday makers escape the wet and windy January weather in search of sun and sea.

This growth comes after the airport handled over nine million passengers in 2013 – breaking the nine million passenger mark for the first time in a calendar year since 2009 – and also breaking two 24 year UK punctuality records for on-time flights in Quarter 3 of last year.

Paul Kehoe, Birmingham Airport’s CEO, said: “These January figures show that more and more people are realising the benefits of using Birmingham as an alternative to other airports to fly for business and leisure.

“This is a great start to 2014 and we look forward to offering even more choice this year as several new routes are launched and extra capacity is made available on key routes.”