Passenger numbers at BAA airports up in August 2005

BAA’s seven UK airports handled a total of 14.3 million passengers in August 2005.

Despite the combined impacts of the aftermath of the London bombings on visits to the capital and the disruption of BA services associated with the Gate Gourmet dispute, this still represented an increase of 0.5% on August 2004.

Performance in all key areas was below recent trends, but the only scheduled market to record a drop in volume against last year was the North Atlantic (-1.3%). Other long haul routes registered an overall increase of 4.9% and European scheduled traffic was up by 1.5% UK domestic traffic rose by 1.1% and additional capacity helped Irish routes to an increase of 8.3%.

Continued weakness in the short haul charter market, suffering from the growth in independently packaged holidays, was reflected in a 9.2% drop in August.

Among individual airports all except Heathrow recorded increased traffic in August. At Heathrow the large number of BA cancellations over the weekend of 12th, 13th August, combined with the aftermath of the London attacks in July contributed to a 3% drop in passengers. Charter traffic, which accounted for a third of Gatwick’s business in August, was down by 7% on last year but strong growth in its European scheduled and other long haul markets helped it to achieve an overall increase of 1.1%.

Stansted’s traffic rose by 4.2% and Southampton continued its rapid growth with an increase close to 30%. In Scotland Edinburgh and Aberdeen recorded growth of 6.6 and 6.9%, respectively while Glasgow was 1.5% ahead of last August.

In total the number of air transport movements was up by 4.0% on last year, but down by 0.7% at Heathrow as a result of BA cancellations. Cargo tonnage was up by 0.1%.

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