BAA traffic decline stable in October

?BAA's seven UK airports handled 9.8m passengers in October, a decrease of 12% on the same month last year. At its half year results on 29 October the company reported a 12% decline for the first 20 days of October. The trend has remained stable at minus 12% since the second half of September.

Among individual airports, growth continued in Scotland, with Edinburgh up 13.4% and Glasgow up 6.6%, and at Stansted up 4.9%. Heathrow traffic fell 20.1%, with North Atlantic traffic down 31.4% and Gatwick was down 12.7%, with North Atlantic traffic down 32%.

The North Atlantic and certain other long-haul markets continue to be worst affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11. The North Atlantic market was down 31.3% in October and other long haul traffic declined by 16.4. Domestic traffic fell by 3.4% across the group although growth continued on domestic routes at Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stansted. Similarly European scheduled traffic was down 11.2% but with growth sustained by low-cost airlines at Stansted and in Scotland.