BAA UK airport traffic up by 3% in November

John Rimmer

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But growth at flagship airport London Heathrow was sluggish owing to slow transatlantic traffic during Thanksgiving and the US elections

BAA recorded an increase in passenger traffic at all of its UK airports in November. The seven airports?London airports Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, Southampton airport and Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen in Scotland?handled a total of 10.2m passengers, a rise of 3% on the same month last year.

The biggest growth was at Aberdeen, where passenger numbers were up by 10.9% to 217,600, followed by Southampton, up by 9.9% to 116,200. Glasgow handled 586,500 passengers and Edinburgh 616,100, up by 5.6% and 4.5% respectively. Numbers at London Gatwick increased by 4.6% to 1.9m, which BAA attributed to growth in the number of scheduled flights, offsetting a decline in the charter business.

Year-on-year growth at Heathrow was more modest at 1.2%, to 5.1m passengers. BAA said the increase was not higher owing to the impact of the US presidential election, rising fuel surcharges and a reduced schedule.

At London Stansted growth in traffic has slowed compared with recent months but the continuing popularity of low-cost travel nonetheless prompted a rise of 4.2% to 1.57m passengers. BAA said that Easyjet and other low-cost airlines continued to enjoy good growth, but pointed to slow progress at Ryanair, which has cut one route compared with its 2003 winter schedule.