A new train station at a UK airport will link up to a high-speed train service, making jetting away much easier. Plans to build a direct link from Birmingham Airport into the HS2 line connecting it with London are now well advanced. The project to build the new station currently out to tender.
When it is completed, journey times from Birmingham to the main London interchange at Old Oak Common could be as low as 32 minutes. That is down from the current 70. That means it could be quicker to get to Birmingham Airport for Londoners than heading to Heathrow on the tube, which takes about an hour from central London.
Birmingham Airport chief executive Nick Barton told the Express & Star: "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.".
The airport is currently undergoing a major upgrade, with bosses claiming they are spending "a million pounds a week" in upgrading facilities over the next five years. That will include adding extra capacity for stands where aircraft could be based overnight. Suggestions that investment would include a second runway at the Solihull site have been ruled out.
Birmingham Airport was a destination associated with chaos last summer when large queues began to form outside of the terminal building. A last-minute Government rule change meant that specialised security scanning machines could not be used to their full capacity during the airport's peak summer holiday period.
At the time Mr Barton told the Mirror that the Department of Transport had partially left the airport in the dark when it announced the high-tech scanners could not be used to allow passengers to travel with two litre bottles in their hand luggage as planned. He admitted that the configuration of the departures hall with the newly installed scanners meant the queues would not be brought back to normal levels - until the Department of Transport directive stopping their full use is lifted.
The CEO also issued a plea to passengers to make sure their bags are correctly packed, while clarifying what the current hand luggage rules at the airport are. Previously he had warned that one in five passengers are arriving with bottles that are too large - potentially adding a 20 minute wait for every one. Given there are 45,000 customers travelling through Birmingham Airport each day right now, that's 3,000 hours of extra security time taken up daily. Mr Barton told the Mirror that passengers don't need to put their liquids in clear plastic bags when heading through security, but that they must be 100ml or less.
.jpeg?auto=webp&width=800)
