Positive developments at our Birmingham hub airport

Metro have worked in a strategic partnership with Birmingham Airport for almost 10 years and its importance as an air cargo hub and global gateway for the Midlands, has been further underlined by critical ground-handling investments and pending China freighter services.

Metro’s partnership with Birmingham International Airport reduces lead times and carbon emission’s, while increasing schedule reliability and enhanced air services and ground-handling capability further boosts this success. 

The scale and efficiency of the airport and cargo handling operations at Birmingham, together with our long-standing strategic partnerships with these operators, enables us to process and collect cargo very quickly after aircraft arrival, avoiding the delays and congestion experienced in peak periods at other UK hubs.

The scope of the airport’s handling capability has been further enhanced by a key ground-handling partner, Swissport, who have installed a main deck loader to accelerate the loading/offloading of freighter aircraft, which will be particularly valuable for the impending China services.

Enhanced relations with the ground-handling operations mean that additional value added services such as cargo packing, palletisation, SKU sortation can take place at the airport rather than transit through off airport.

Three major Middle-Eastern airlines are enhancing the airport’s connectivity to the region’s strategic air hubs, with Emirates’ iconic A380 ‘superjumbo’ serving Birmingham twice-daily from Dubai, while Saudia, the flag carrier of Saudi Arabia, operate thrice-weekly flights to and from Jeddah and Qatar Airways running daily services to Doha.

In in addition to the daily wide body flights from Qatar Airways, scheduled Saudi flights and enhanced Emirates service, Air India and Turkish Airways have also increased services.  

Metro are able to offer time critical ‘JIT’ services through the airport where freight can be transferred in minutes rather than hours from aircraft to the road. Additional customs formalities such as ATA carnets are handled swiftly and efficiently. 

Birmingham International is the UK’s fastest-growing airport and our central air freight hub, with proximity to major clients and manufacturing regions, for speed of first/final mile logistics and 90% of the UK population within a few hours drive.

For further information on our air freight and BHX gateway solutions please EMAIL Andrew Brooks.