Birmingham Airport needs new management

On 22 March 2013 the Birmingham Post’s Jonathan Walker wrote that Midland MPs are quietly lobbying at Westminster for Birmingham Airport to “be allowed” a second runway.

And on 4 April, the Post reported that Birmingham Airport chief executive Paul Kehoe had “warned against public money skewing the airline industry after Cardiff Airport was sold to the Welsh government”.

Spanish firm Abertis, which is weighed down by debts of nearly £12 million, agreed a £52 million sale last week. Cardiff is the first of three UK airports it hopes to offload.

Paul Kehoe said he had no problem with public shareholders – Birmingham Airport has them – but added it would be fundamentally wrong for government cash to be invested in attracting airlines to the Welsh hub.

The deal will see the Welsh government manage the struggling airport at arms’ length in the hope of improving passenger numbers, which have halved in the past five years to just 1.2 million.

Mr Kehoe told the Post: “I am completely opposed to the re-nationalisation of airports like has been announced in Cardiff.

“If they start to fund airlines to come in, that is going to create an uneven playing field, and that is a worry.

“Having privatised the airports in the 1980s and 1990s it is bizzare [sic] that they are nationalising them again.”
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Birmingham Airport is 48 per cent owned by local authorities, but Mr Kehoe said he was not being hypocritical.
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Meanwhile, Mr Kehoe also suggested Britain had more airports than it needed, owing to the legacy of a short-lived boom in budget travel.
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Mr Kehoe said there were 20 airports handling commercial flights in an area stretching from Southampton to Leeds.

Birmingham Airport itself has received vast quantities of public cash over the years, including support for new terminal buildings, a railway station, and expansion of its runway. So who would be paying for the second runway? And why build a second runway, when most most of the airport’s current capacity is unused, and there is excess capacity at other regional airports?

The current public / private ownership arrangement has lumbered the airport with weak management, pursuing ridiculous schemes like moving the airport nearer to the HS2 railway. So West Midlands local authorities should either reacquire control of the airport, or sell up altogether.