BAA November traffic up 2.2%

Emily Pacey

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Increased capacity and more routes to India offset European charter traffic fall at BAA

BAA's seven airports in the UK handled a total of 10.4m passengers in November, an increase of 2.2% on the same month last year.

North Atlantic traffic rose by 1%, with other long-haul routes together gaining 8.4%. BAA attributed the rise to increased capacity and the number of airlines serving routes to India. European scheduled traffic went up by 2.3% but European charter traffic fell once again, this time by 19.8%, partly due to reductions in seat capacity. UK domestic routes recorded a 0.6% rise, while Irish routes grew by 8.8%.

All seven airports recorded passenger growth in November, the biggest increase being Southampton's 14.5% gain. Gatwick and Stansted recorded steady growth of 1.9% and 2.1% respectively. Traffic at Heathrow recovered after its 0.8% October fall, rising by 1.7% in November. In Scotland, Aberdeen continued to show strong growth, welcoming 9.1% more passengers this November than last. Glasgow and Edinburgh airports showed growth of 1.3% and 3.0% respectively.

From January to November BAA UK traffic grew by 2.4% on the same period last year, helped by higher seat capacity and long-haul growth.

Separately, BAA has announced that construction of an extra runway and new facilities at Stansted, which would more than double the airport's yearly passenger capacity to 50m, will be complete by 2013 at a cost of £2.7bn ($4.71bn).

BAA chief executive Mike Clasper said: "'We have worked very hard in the last two years to ensure that Stansted G2 [runway two] will deliver great value to the UK economy, to our airlines and to people using the airport."