Slowing air passenger numbers across UK
2008-11-17
Passenger numbers at BAA's seven UK-based airports were down 6% year on year in October.
And while that's good news for frequent flyers – meaning you can get through the airports a little quicker – it's bad news for the industry.
The airport firm handled some 12.4 million passengers in October 2008. This year, BAA´s UK airport traffic has declined by 1.9%, for the ten months to October, with a total number of passengers of 125.8 million.
European charter flights recorded the highest percentage drop (-15.7%) while North Atlantic, domestic, European scheduled and other long haul were down 7.1%, 6.3%, 5.1% and 4.3% respectively.
On an individual airport level, Heathrow's passenger numbers were down 3.7%, although its North Atlantic traffic continued to do well (up 7.4%). Gatwick’s positive results on the Irish routes (up 27.3%) and European scheduled (up 3.5%) offset the 41.6% drop in North Atlantic traffic (mostly put down to the introduction of the ‘Open Skies’ agreement), the airport overall declined 10.3%. Stansted was down by 6.3%; Southampton by 7.4%.
Scottish airports posted an overall drop of 6.1% - Glasgow fell by 9.1%, Aberdeen by 5.3% and Edinburgh by 3.2%.
