OCTOBER TRAFFIC FIGURES BAA'S AIRPORTS
14 November 2008BAA traffic commentary: October 2008
BAA’s seven UK airports handled a total of 12.4 million passengers during October, a drop of 6.0% over the same period last year. Year to date, BAA´s UK airport traffic shows a decline of 1.9% for the ten months to October at a total of 125.8 million.
Of the key markets, European charter recorded the highest percentage drop (-15.7%) while North Atlantic, Domestic, European scheduled and other long haul were down 7.1%, 6.3%, 5.1% and 4.3% respectively.
On an individual airport level, Heathrow was down 3.7% although its North Atlantic traffic continued to do well (up 7.4%). Gatwick’s positive results on the Irish routes (up 27.3%) and European scheduled (up 3.5%) partly offset the 41.6% drop in North Atlantic traffic (mainly due to the introduction of the ‘Open Skies’ agreement), the airport overall declined 10.3%. Stansted was down by 6.3% and Southampton by 7.4%.
Overall the Scottish airports posted a drop of 6.1%, Glasgow fell by 9.1%, Aberdeen by 5.3% and Edinburgh by 3.2%.
In total the group handled 4.2% fewer air transport movements in October. Cargo tonnage was down 2.5% despite increases of 4.2%, 3.3% and 26.8% respectively at Heathrow, Glasgow and Aberdeen.
BAA remains of the view that the long-term growth prospects for aviation are good. Historically, air traffic growth recovers from short-term shocks such as those currently being played out in the financial markets, as evidenced by the growth in traffic after the Gulf wars, 9/11 and the Asian economic problems in the late 1990s and the fact that sales of commercial civilian aircraft remain buoyant.
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