BAA passengers down 0.9 percent in December; 4.2 percent in 2009
11.01.10
Passenger traffic at BAA's six UK airports fell 4.2 percent year-on-year in 2009, with December traffic down 0.9 percent. It said that weather conditions in December caused an estimated 1.9 percent reduction in passenger numbers, without which it would have been up. Passenger numbers at Heathrow fell 1.5 percent in 2009 but grew by 1.2 percent in December. Stansted saw best performance last month since March 2008 (but was still down on last year) and BAA's cargo tonnage across the six airports was up 20 percent on last year.
BAA’s six UK airports handled 8 million passengers in December, down 0.9 percent on last year. Passengers at airports across Europe and North America were affected by cancellations and disruption arising from fog and snow. It is estimated that weather conditions accounted for the loss of 150,000 passengers at BAA's airports.
Heathrow recorded a 1.2 percent increase in passengers, driven primarily by an increase in European scheduled traffic and the long-haul network to Asia, Africa and Australia. Stansted declined 2.6 percent in December, the best performance since March 2008. Glasgow was down 8.8 percent, Edinburgh down 4.4 percent, Aberdeen down 9.4 percent, all hit by the weather and the collapse of FlyGlobespan. Passengers at Southampton Airport declined 5.9 percent in December.
All major markets suffered from the bad weather. Domestic traffic was down 6.5 percent on last year but European Scheduled traffic was up 1.6 percent. North Atlantic traffic was down 5.7 percent while other long-haul routes were up 3.5 percent.
December’s results took the total for BAA’s UK airports in 2009 to 106.9 million, down 4.2 percent on 2008. However, the rate of decline slowed to 1.2 percent in the fourth quarter. Heathrow passengers were down 1.5 percent (65.9m), Stansted down 10.7 percent (20.0) and Southampton down 8.2 percent (1.8m). Edinburgh Airport’s traffic up 0.6 percent (9.0m), Glasgow down 11.3 percent (7.2m) and Aberdeen down 9.4 percent (3.0m).
Colin Matthews, BAA’s chief executive, said: ‘2009 was a difficult year for our airline customers. Towards the end of the year, we saw signs of improvements, particularly at Heathrow, but there are more challenging times ahead in 2010.’
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