Heathrow traffic is up but Stansted suffers slump
BAA said unrest in the Middle East had had only a ‘moderate’ impact on its traffic last month, with business from Heathrow and its three Scottish airports up on the same period of 2010.
However, at Stansted traffic slumped more than 6% as low-cost airlines shifted some of their operations to more competitive airports in Europe. Southampton saw a 9.5% drop in business due to a fall in domestic traffic.
Heathrow’s traffic grew by 0.5% in February, with good performance on European scheduled services, said BAA. Glasgow was up by 3.9% in total but by 13.1% on European services. Edinburgh was up 5.0% overall but by 20.7% on European routes. Aberdeen recorded a 4.9% gain.
Scotland – and Edinburgh in particular – benefited from rugby-related travel during the Six Nations Championship.
Across BAA, European scheduled traffic grew most strongly in February (up 1.4%) but there were falls in domestic traffic (down 2.0%) and North Atlantic traffic (down 1.5%). Other long haul routes were up by 0.6% overall, including increases of nearly 10% on Indian services from Heathrow.
Together, the company’s six airports handled a total of 7.1 million passengers in February – down 0.2% on the previous year.
By Linsey McNeill
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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