Friday, May 24, 2024 Birmingham Airport braces for the Memorial Day weekend, the first major holiday travel period of the year. Leaders at the airport can’t emphasize enough how busy they are right now. If you’re traveling for Memorial Day this weekend, remember to pack your patience.
Birmingham Airport Authority leaders say after coming off of a record year last year, things aren’t slowing down. Birmingham Airport Authority Communications Director Kim Hunt says don’t expect to just waltz right in if you’re flying out of the Magic City. “For some reason, this last week of May, it always just kind of culminates in a lot of travel.
We expected a very busy week, it has turned out to be a very busy week, but really, we’ve had a very busy year so far,” she said. “In April, the number of enplanements, which is the number of people getting on planes and flying somewhere out of this airport, we’re up 11%, which is a really robust increase.” The growth at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport isn’t slowing down.
The airport is coming off a record year of three million passengers flying out in 2023, which is up 14% from the year prior. With that kind of growth comes growing pains. For the airport, that looks like longer wait times, according to Hunt.
“Things are generally fairly lowkey here. We don’t generally have long lines, that sort of thing, which we love about our airport. But when we’re really really busy, like this deck can fill up, an.
