BAA traffic returns to slight growth in February

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BAA's seven UK airports handled a total of 8.2m passengers in February, a small gain of +0.3% over last year. This is the first monthly increase since September 11.

Among the individual markets, BAA said all the short haul routes saw increases, largely due to intensifying competition by the low cost scheduled airlines. Domestic traffic grew +3.4% and European scheduled traffic added +0.5%. The +14.6% growth in Irish traffic was fuelled by competitive fares and new services, as well as by recovery from strikes which hit volumes in February last year. European charter traffic was also up by +1.1%.

Although still below last year's level, the month on month drop of -7.7% in North Atlantic traffic represented a substantial recovery compared with the fall of -31.3% recorded in October. Other long haul traffic was down by -1.4% but has shown consistent month on month improvement since the low of -16.4% in October 2001.

Edinburgh (+19.1%), Stansted (+16.4%) and Glasgow (+6.4%) experienced strong growth underpinned by the low cost scheduled airlines. Heathrow was virtually unchanged at 0.1%, and Gatwick was down 10.8%, an improvement since December and January when traffic for both months fell -16.4%. BAA said the improvement at Gatwick is partly due to new low fare routes coming into service, including easyJet which now operates to eight destinations from the airport.