UK airports still affected by foot-and-mouth outbreak

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Traffic figures at BAA's seven UK airports released this week show that there is a continued impact of the foot-and-mouth outbreak on inbound tourist travel. In July BAA airports reported record traffic of 12.8m passengers, an increase of just 0.7% on July 2000. 

There was positive growth at Stansted (+14.8%), benefiting from strong domestic traffic up 64.5% and growth continued at all airports except Heathrow, said BAA.  Edinburgh added 5.9% benefiting from strong European and domestic traffic and Glasgow grew by 3.2%.  Gatwick grew by 1.4% with growth in its European and domestic routes.  Heathrow saw a drop of 3.5% with its North Atlantic traffic reduced by 7.1%, impacted by the continued foot-and-mouth effect and the US economic slowdown.  However, Heathrow's other long haul traffic added 2.9%. 

Across key markets, domestic traffic experienced a 4.2% increase in July sustained by the low cost airlines and European scheduled and charter traffic added 2.1% and 2.2% respectively.