BAA issues warning over Heathrow capacity
Airports operator BAA warned that Heathrow is losing its competitive edge as it revealed its latest passenger numbers.
Heathrow’s load factors rose 0.1 percentage points in April, to 76.4%, while the average number of seats per aircraft was also up, rising 1.1% to 197.6.
Passenger numbers were marginally up at 5.8 million.
BAA said the increases are consistent with the airport having reached its cap on the number of flights.
Chief executive Colin Matthews said the modest growth was coming from larger and fuller aircraft, not from more routes and frequencies to emerging markets.
"This lack of connectivity is damaging the UK economy," he said.
Overall, 9.1 million passengers travelled through BAA’s airports in April, a 0.1% increase on the same month last year.
Year-on-year comparisons for the month were complicated by the timing of Easter so combining March and April traffic reveals a year on year increase of 1.9%.
The decline in Stansted’s passenger numbers moderated to 2.7%, its lowest level in nearly a year.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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