Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport to Raise Parking Rates for Airline Crew Members

Parking at the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport is about to get more expensive for some travelers, but some 400 workers are in for an even bigger rate hike late this year.

Beginning Dec. 31, the Birmingham Airport Authority will require airline crew members to pay $10 a day to park in the economy lot, the commercial rate that’s charged to other visitors and passengers.

That’s a 900% jump from the $1 rate those 400 workers have been paying to park while they fly on the job.

“Ending the program is a necessity as we look to restructure parking rates that have not been increased in 16 years,” said the authority’s president and CEO Ronald Mathieu in a letter to the airport’s commuter parking participants last week. “We cannot, in good conscience, continue to offer $1 a day parking to a select group of customers, while asking everyone else to pay more.”

For years, through the commuter parking program, airline crew members who live in the Birmingham area and fly out of the airport have only had to pay $1 a day to park in the economy parking lot. The rate hike won’t apply to airport employees who work at the gates and ticket counters, said airport authority spokeswoman Kim Hunt.

In the April 8 letter, Mathieu wrote the airport is running out of parking because of increasing passenger traffic that’s rebounded since the COVID pandemic.

“More and more often, customers are left to scramble for a place to leave their vehicles,” Mathieu said in the letter. “This is obviously not what we want for customers who make the choice to fly out of BHM.”

He also pointed to infrastructure grants from the Federal Aviation Administration that could bar the airport from showing “preferential treatment to any group when it comes to how much we charge for serves.”

The airport is also increasing its parking rates for other travelers, for the first time since 2008. Starting July 1, the economy parking rate will remain the same at $10 a day, but hourly parking, daily parking and incremental parking will all go up.

Hourly parking will jump from $24 a day to $26 a day, daily parking will jump from $12 a day to $17 a day, and incremental parking will jump from $1 an hour to $2 an hour in all lots, per the airport authority.

“We understand that nobody wants to pay more. But here’s the dilemma that we have,” Hunt said. “We need to improve the customer experience, we need to grow capacity, we need to do a lot of hard work in the years to come.”

She added that the airport is preparing to introduce new projects to modernize its parking system that will cost between $40 and $50 million in the next several years.

“That is the reason why we had to raise rates, because we have to pay for all these improvements,” Hunt said. “As we go to our customers and ask them to pay more, it didn’t seem fair to ask one particular group of customers – and that’s what they are, they’re customers – to continue to pay a dollar a day.”

The airport authority barred new participants from joining its commuter parking program in 2024 while reviewing its parking operations for a year to figure out the best next step, Mathieu said.

“We understand that participants in the CPP have enjoyed the deep discounts offered by BAA for many years,” he said in the letter. “I have held on to this program for as long as possible even when it became obvious that keeping it was not in the best interest of the airport or the community. Sometimes, change is necessary.”

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