The new base will be the first time the airline has operated from the facility with 15 destinations for summer 2017, including Alicante, Majorca and Tenerife, now on sale.
With 590,000 seats on 57 weekly flights on sale from the airport for the summer, Jet2Holidays head of trade sales Alan Cross said the move was a vote of confidence both in the local market and the ability of travel agents to tap into it.
He added: “Birmingham is a very strong area for selling packages. From a travel trade perspective there are a lot of strong independents locally and you have Midcounties Co-operative Travel and between them they will support a lot of sales.
“We’ve been operating the Manchester and East Midlands airports markets and more customers are coming from that Birmingham catchment area.”
Cross said in order to ensure the move is well-supported, Jet2Holidays has also increased its trade sales team from 5 to 8 and while a regional sales manager and sales executive will drive business to both Birmingham and the East Midlands airports, another sales executive will focus purely on the Birmingham area.
The airline is also expecting 30 new 737-800s to be delivered in the 18 months starting in September and four have already been ear-marked for the new base.
“As well as expanding, we’ve got to be able to support it so we’ve made sure the infrastructure is in place to make it happen,” Cross added.
Midcounties Co-operative Travel group general manager Alistair Rowland said: “We already send tens of thousands of our customers from East Midlands with them and look forward to the new Birmingham routes offering more choice and great value.”
Steve Heapy, chief executive of Jet2.com and Jet2holidays, said: “This is an incredibly exciting day for us as we announce our expansion into our eighth UK airport base, providing further growth and investment for the region.”
