BAA passengers down 3.1% on snow
10.02.10
Last month’s severe weather led to a 3.1% drop in passengers using BAA airports. Without the weather disruption, the airports operator estimated the drop would have been just 0.3% across its six UK airports.
BAA handled 7.2 million passengers in January. Heathrow saw a 0.5% drop in passengers, however without the bad weather causing the loss of around 145,000 passengers, traffic would have grown by an estimated 2.5%, BAA said.
The passenger decline at Stansted was 5.6%; at Southampton 9.7%; Glasgow 12.2%; Edinburgh 7.4%; Aberdeen 13.6%. At each airport a significant part of the drop can be attributed to the snow, BAA said. As in December, Glasgow and Edinburgh were also impacted by the collapse of the Scottish airline Flyglobespan.
By market, North Atlantic traffic was down 3.8% and scheduled European traffic was down 0.3%. There were rises in South American (9.6%), and Middle East (9.5%) traffic.
BAA chief executive Colin Matthews said: ‘There is no doubt that the market remains a difficult one, and certainly the snow didn't help, but, equally, there are encouraging signs of growth, particularly on the routes out of Heathrow to the Middle East and South America, as well as cargo. This once again underlines Heathrow's role as the UK's only hub airport.’
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