On this page (6 sections)
The network at a glance
A leisure airport first, with a serious long-haul layer on top.
Birmingham's map is built around holidays and family visits: Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and the Canaries dominate the schedule, Ryanair, Jet2, easyJet, TUI and Wizz Air fly most of it, and the long-haul layer (Dubai, Doha, Jeddah, Delhi, Amritsar) connects the Midlands to the Gulf and India non-stop. The airport counts more than 140 direct destinations, with over 650 more reachable on one stop through the hub carriers, and a record 13,654,108 passengers used it in 2025. The airlines guide covers who flies what; for what is leaving right now, see the departures board. Everything below is the direct network, with the seasonal pattern flagged for the routes where it changes the decision; the airport's live map shows exactly what is on sale for each season.
UK, Ireland and the islands
Dublin is the biggest route from Birmingham, full stop.
Dublin carried 871,092 passengers in 2025, more than any other route, with Aer Lingus and Ryanair competing on it, and Ryanair adds Cork, Shannon and Knock for the rest of Ireland. Belfast has two links: easyJet to Belfast International (a top-ten route in its own right) and Aer Lingus to Belfast City. In Scotland, easyJet flies Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness (Inverness is new for 2026) and Loganair covers Aberdeen; Derry, the Isle of Man (Loganair) and the Channel Islands (Aurigny to Guernsey, easyJet to Jersey) round out the domestic map. There is no London or Manchester flight, for the sensible reason that the train does it better; the travel between airports guide covers reaching Heathrow, Gatwick and the rest by ground.
Spain, Portugal and the Atlantic islands
The biggest slice of the map: four of the seven busiest routes are Spanish.
Spain is where Birmingham flies most. Palma (Majorca), Alicante, Tenerife and Malaga were the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh busiest routes of 2025, each with its own guide. Around them sit the rest of the Canaries (Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, all year round), the Balearics (Ibiza and Menorca, summer), and a long mainland tail: Barcelona, Madrid, Seville, Valencia and Murcia year-round, with Almeria, Jerez, Santander, Reus and Girona in the summer schedule. Portugal gets Faro, Lisbon, Porto and Funchal (Madeira), and easyJet flies to Gibraltar. Most of the mainland tail is Ryanair; Jet2 and TUI carry the holiday-package weight to the islands.
Europe: cities, beaches and ski
Rome by four airlines, Greece by a dozen islands, and Lapland in the winter schedule.
The city-break set is strong. Amsterdam (KLM and easyJet) and Paris Charles de Gaulle (Air France and easyJet, with Ryanair flying to distant Beauvais) are the third and ninth busiest routes; Rome is served by four airlines at once (easyJet from March 2026, alongside Jet2, Ryanair and Wizz Air), which keeps fares honest. Beyond them: Milan (Linate and Bergamo), then a summer set of Venice (with Ryanair serving nearby Treviso), Verona, Pisa, Naples and Catania, joined for summer 2026 by Palermo; Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Zurich for the German-speaking cities; Prague, Krakow and a wide Polish set; Budapest, Vienna, Sofia, Bucharest and, from April 2026, Tirana. On Nice, easyJet joins Jet2 from May 2026.
For beaches, Greece and Turkey carry the summer: Corfu, Crete (Chania and Heraklion), Rhodes, Kos, Zakynthos, Kefalonia, Skiathos, Samos, Santorini and more on the Greek side, nearly all May to October; the airport's live route map shows exactly what is on sale for each season. Turkey runs deeper than most airports manage: Antalya was the eighth-busiest route of 2025 and flies year-round, with Dalaman, Bodrum and Izmir in summer and both Istanbul airports (Turkish Airlines and Pegasus) all year. Cyprus (Paphos year-round, Larnaca in summer) and Malta (three airlines) fill the eastern Mediterranean; Croatia gets Dubrovnik, Split and Pula in summer.
Winter has its own map: Geneva, Grenoble, Chambery, Salzburg, Innsbruck and Turin serve the ski season, Lapland appears three ways (Rovaniemi, Kittila and Kuusamo), easyJet flies Reykjavik seasonally, and Copenhagen turns crowded in late 2026 when Ryanair, easyJet and Jet2 all join SAS on the route.
Long-haul and further afield
Seven long-haul routes fly non-stop all year round: the Gulf, India and the Caribbean.
The long-haul layer is compact but heavyweight. Emirates flies Dubai, the second-busiest route on the whole network, and Qatar Airways flies Doha; between them they put most of Asia, Africa and Australia one stop from Birmingham. Saudia serves Jeddah, and Air India links Amritsar and Delhi non-stop, the only direct flights between Birmingham and India and a lifeline for the region's Punjabi families. TUI carries the year-round long-haul beaches, Cancun and Montego Bay, making seven in all, and adds Punta Cana, La Romana and Barbados in season, plus Cape Verde (Sal and Boa Vista) and, from November 2026, Banjul in The Gambia. Closer in, Egyptair starts Cairo on 27 October 2026. North Africa is dense too: Marrakesh and Agadir, Enfidha in Tunisia, and Egypt's Hurghada and Sharm El Sheikh.
The gap is North America: no non-stop flights today. The airport is putting a multi-million financial package behind winning a daily New York service, aiming at summer 2027; until that lands, the practical patterns are one stop via Dublin (Aer Lingus, with US immigration cleared in Dublin before you board), Amsterdam, Paris or the Gulf hubs. If a cancelled or delayed connection is the worry, the cancelled flights guide covers your rights.
The route guides
The busiest and most asked-about routes, each covered properly.
Ten routes get the full treatment: the airlines flying them, how often, typical flight times and when to book. Eight sit in the 2025 top ten by passengers; Doha and Amritsar earn their place by how much they matter here.