BAA traffic up 2% in December

Emily Pacey

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The UK airports group handled a total of 144.3m passengers in 2005, up 3% on the previous year

Key market segments recorded mixed results. North Atlantic traffic fell by 1.7% after posting steady growth since September. Other long-haul routes gained 7.4%, having shown strong growth throughout the year mostly owing to increased traffic on Chinese and Indian routes. European scheduled traffic increased by 3.7%, and European charter traffic continued to fall, this time by 16.4%. BAA said this was a result of charter airlines diversifying into the scheduled sector.

New low-cost services boosted traffic on Irish routes by 7.5%, while traffic on UK domestic routes dropped by 0.5%.

Among BAA's individual airports Southampton showed the fastest growth, with an 18.6% increase in traffic in December. Stansted grew by 4.8%, Gatwick by 2.5% while Heathrow's figures remained unchanged. In Scotland, Aberdeen handled 10.4% more passengers than in December 2004, Edinburgh gained by 3.5% and Glasgow by 1.9%.

Since November 1 2005 BAA has lowered its forecast for traffic growth in the full financial year from 3% to 2.5%, with growth for the financial year to date standing at 2.4%.