Birmingham Airport has said that Spanish airline AlbaStar has launched twice weekly flights between Birmingham and Palma de Mallorca.
The route will be served by a Boeing 737-400 aircraft containing 170 seats and will operate on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tickets are available for booking at the airline’s website as well as through online travel agency ‘On the Beach’, the airport said.
William Pearson, Birmingham Airport’s Aviation Director, said: ‘We are very pleased to be welcoming Alba Star – our twelfth new airline in the space of just over a year, to Birmingham Airport.
‘Palma de Mallorca is a very well-known and extremely popular holiday destination from Birmingham Airport. When this is combined with the great on board service and very reasonable seat prices AlbaStar and ‘On the Beach’ offer, we are sure this will be a popular route and carrier and we look forward to seeing it flourish at Birmingham Airport.’
Michael Harrington, Managing Director of AlbaStar, added: ‘We are very pleased to start this new initiative at Birmingham Airport which we now hope becomes the central platform for our UK AlbaStar operations. Birmingham is ideally geographically situated and the airport has an excellent rail link which allows the airport to have an extended catchment area.’
Birmingham Airport recently reported that it handled over one million passengers in the month of May – the first time that the airport has reached this milestone this year. In total 1,005,861 people travelled through the airport in May, up by 11.1 per cent compared to the same month last year. Long-haul routes registered the greatest rise in demand with 16.5 per cent passenger growth compared to the same month last year. Meanwhile, short-haul routes recorded a 10.5 per cent growth rate year-on-year.
Commenting on the passenger growth, Paul Kehoe, chief executive officer at Birmingham Airport, said: ‘To be hitting the one million passenger mark in May is fantastic news for the airport. It shows us that the new airlines and routes we have recently introduced are proving popular with our passengers.’
Last month, leading regional airlines including Flybe, Wizz Air and Turkish Airlines have announced expansion to their services from Birmingham.
