Growth slows but passenger numbers hit record levels
The rate of growth at BAA’s UK airports slowed last month following the London bomb attacks but passenger numbers still hit record levels, latest figures have revealed.
BAA’s seven airports handled almost 14.6 million passengers in July, a 2.6% increase on the same month last year. It compares to a growth in June of 4.3%.
North Atlantic traffic increased 1%, other long haul grew 7.5%, Irish traffic by 8%, European scheduled by 3.8% and domestic by 1.4%. Only the European charter market suffered, showing a drop of 5.5%.
The biggest growth came at Southampton where 195,000 people travelled through the terminal, almost 31% more than last year.
But the three London airports, while showing overall growth of 1.7% to 12.2 million, were impacted by the terrorist attacks, according to BAA.
Passengers at Stansted rose 6.1% to 2.17 million, Gatwick increased 3.3% to 3.5 million while Heathrow, which also suffered capacity restraints, fell 0.6% to 6.4 million.
At BAA’s three Scottish airports, numbers rose 5.8% to 2.17 million with Aberdeen showing the strongest year on year growth of 8.1% to 276,000.
Edinburgh welcomed 845,000, 6.2% more than July 2004, while Glasgow handled 1.05 million, a 4.8% jump. An expanded range of low cost scheduled flights was largely responsible for the growth.
Report by Steve Jones
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