17 March 2009

Charter carriers lead decline in UK airline passengers

Charter airline passenger carryings plunged by three million last year as the UK’s airports suffered their first 12 months of decline since 1991.

Passengers flying on charter carriers have been declining in recent years, and the 2008 total of 29 million represented a drop of 9.3 per cent on 2007, according to the Civil Aviation Authority.

Last year also saw the collapse of XL Airways, Zoom Airlines and a number of all-business class carriers such as Silverjet.

Scheduled airlines flew 1.6 million fewer passengers at 206 million.

UK airports handled 235 million passengers, a drop of 4.6 million year-on-year.

This represents a fall of 1.9 per cent on 2007, making 2008 the first year to show a decline in passenger numbers at UK airports for 17 years.

The CAA warned of a further drop this year.

The slump in passengers last year was most marked for the final quarter as the economic downturn bit, with November passenger numbers having the largest monthly drop of 8.9 per cent and December passenger numbers declining by 7.9 per cent.

At the London airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City - the fall was two per cent overall.

But the largest drop came at Stansted with a 1.4 million drop in passengers, representing a six per cent decline.

Conversely, Luton served an extra 255,000 passengers or 2.6 per cent more than 2007 and London City saw its fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth with a 12 per cent overall increase and is now handling 2.4 per cent of all London passengers.

Traffic at regional airport contracted by 1.8 per cent to 98 million passengers.

Manchester airport, the largest regional airport, saw passenger numbers fall by 3.8 per cent whereas Birmingham airport grew by 4.8 per cent.

Last year 25 million passengers took domestic flights, a fall of 4.8 per cent (1.2 million) on 2007.

This is a trend that has been apparent for a number of years and is driven in part by greater competition with domestic rail services, the CAA said.

During 2008, air transport movements (landings and take-offs of commercial aircraft) at UK airports fell by 2.2 per cent to 2.3 million, which is the first fall since 2002.

CAA group director of economic regulation Dr Harry Bush, said: "The fall in passenger numbers is to be expected in light of the worsening economic situation during 2008.

"The combination of business failures, such as those of XL Leisure Group and Zoom Airlines, together with a fluctuating oil price and the economic downturn has had a marked effect on the numbers of trips being taken.

"The early indications are that the larger falls seen in the last quarter of 2008 are continuing into the New Year, with the prospect of declining traffic in 2009 overall, which, if it occurs, will be the first time since World War Two that UK passenger numbers have fallen for two consecutive years.

"Current economic trends make this outcome more likely than not."