in the year of 1939
The original terminal opened on May 1st 1939, the first scheduled flight was from Liverpool by Dragon Rapide. The Air Ministry took over the site during wartime and built two hard runways. Austin built a factory on the eastern side where Stirling and Lancaster aircraft were built, two extra hangars were constructed to house them. Civil flights recommenced in July 1946.
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in the year of 1954
By 1954 services to Dublin, Belfast, Jersey, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Northolt were established using Dakotas, Vikings and Viscounts. The airport now offered two hard runways - both just over 4000ft in length, restricting the use of larger, four engine aircraft. By 1959 the main runway was extended by 800ft and the first jet airliner to visit was a Comet from Lyneham in April 1961. Viscounts were now dominant on expanding services and the BEA route to Jersey was proving very popular.

In the 1960s Constellations, Vanguards and Electras were appearing, but the runway length still restricted operations by these larger aircraft. In 1964 the go-ahead was given to extend the main runway to 7,398ft. In Spring 1966 when part of the new extension was available jet flights began with One-Elevens and Spanish Convair 990s. Noise complaints increased as more jets used the airport - including DC-8s, DC-9s, Tridents and Boeing 707s.

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in the year of 1971
In April 1971 BOAC VC10s began services to New York, though it was poorly supported and closed in October 1972. During peek periods the terminals became crowded and it was obvious that expansion was required as the wide-bodied jets started appearing. The first wide-body was a Laker DC-10 in 1972 followed by the first Jumbo jet, a Qantas example, arriving in June 1978. The first regular 747 flights were operated by CP Air to Toronto in 1979. British Airways began replacing Viscounts

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in the year of 1980
The first Concorde arrived in 1980 operated by Air France. Approval had now been given to construct a new terminal close to the NEC, work beginning in 1981. The new terminal was opened by The Queen in May 1984, opening the door for new routes and an increase in passengers. Birmingham’s own airline, 'Birmingham Executive', was born in 1983, opening many new routes into Europe. It later became Birmingham European until being taken over by Maersk of Denmark and then established as a British Airways franchise.

In 1984 work to enlarge the terminal began and in 1989 construction began on a new airport hotel. From 1986 an expanded cargo facility could now operate near the old terminal site. In 1987 the airport became Birmingham Airport plc.

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in the year of 1990
The main runway could now offer 2600m (8,530ft) for take off, helping to attract scheduled flights to the USA. American Airlines started services to Chicago using Boeing 767s shortly followed by Continental with Boeing 757s and DC-10s to New York. Charter flights became available to the Dominican Republic and recently Mexico.

In 1991 the Eurohub was opened, used by British Airways and it's partners. Noisy jets were very rare by 1998 with the replacement of older 737s and BAC 1-11s with new generation aircraft. Passenger numbers increased year by year so large-scale development plans were drawn up. This will increase the size of both terminals and the parking areas. Air Traffic Control facilities have improved with the installation of ground surface radar for use in low visibility.

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in the year of 1995
By the late 1990s air transport movements have increased at a high rate to 111,000 and at peak times during weekday mornings their is now one movement every 60 seconds. In 1999 there were up to 13 charter aircraft based at the airport daily during the Summer and on busy Summer mornings up to 7 wide-bodied transatlantic flights were handled. 7 million passengers were handled during 1999, currently increasing at a steady annual rate. This is quite an achievement when you consider that no 'low cost, no frills' airline is based at Birmingham, where as other airports have seen passenger figures swell with the arrival of such airlines.

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in the year of 1997
In 1997 a further restructuring of the airport company took place with a new holding company - Birmingham Airport Holdings Limited being formed - and the West Midlands District Councils reduced there shareholding to 49% through a share sale to the private sector. This allowed the Airport to access funding outside the Governments Public Sector Borrowing Requirements that had previously constrained the borrowing capability and therefore capital expenditure programme available to the airport.

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in the year of 2001
In 1997 a further restructuring of the airport company took place with a new holding company - Birmingham Airport Holdings A joint venture between Aer Rianta International - a subsidiary of Aer Riante, the Irish Airport Authority - and Bridgepoint Capital - formely NatWest Ventures - took a 40% stake in the Airport Company which now effectively became a public/private Partnership. The shareholding has subsequently increased to 48.25% and in December 2001 Macquarie Airports Group announced it had acquired Bridgepoint Capitials interest in the Airport company.

In recent years the Airport company has maintained a rolling development plan to keep up with passenger demand. This has resulted in extensions to both "Main" terminal and "Eurohub", the construction of the "Millennium Link" to join the two terminals, a new multistory and long stay car park and the provision of further aircraft parking stands and air bridges.

On December 18th 2000 one of the World's major airlines, Emirates started daily flights to Dubai with the Airbus A330-200. Now this will allow convenient access to Asia and Australia. This was then followed by Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) to Copenhagen, Pakistan (PIA) to Karachi and Uzbekistan Airways to Tashkent. Czech Airlines (CSA) started up a 5 times weekly service to Prague in March 2001. This has since been increased to 6 times weekly.

In January 2002 the airport changed the names of its two terminals to Terminal 1 (Main Terminal) and Terminal 2 (Eurohub). 2004 saw the start of a new twice daily service to Milan by Alitalia, Mahan Air to Tehren and Continental going twice daily on their New York service.

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in the year of 2005
At the end of 2004, Air India announced their intention to commence a new three times weekly Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham-Toronto service and this duly commenced on 15th May 2005 and is being operated by their new Boeing 777-200's. It is also not the first time that Air India has served the airport. In the 1980's they for a short time had a Boeing 707 service that routed via Moscow but then ceased after a period of unrest in India.

Emirates launched its second daily service to Dubai on 1st June 2005. They had originally announced their intention to go double daily from mid March 2004. Unfortunately fate intervened after they managed to acquire some additional slots at Heathrow. At short notice the planned Birmingham aircraft was switched to that route and in the short term Birmingham has had to make do with an upgrade to a Boeing 777-200 from the previously used Airbus A330-200.

2005 has also seen the start of many other new airlines such as bmibaby and Monarch Scheduled with many low-cost flights along with Germanwings to Cologne and Sun-Air (British Airways) to Billund.

The airport has also seen major works being carried out within and around the terminal building with a large extension to the departure lounge, alterations to customs, a new-look for Terminal 2 check-in, runway re-surfacing, new taxiway turn-off for Runway 15 and recently major works for further remote parking stands for Terminal 2 opposite parking stands 1-7.