BAA boost as Heathrow has record month
THE number of people travelling through BAA’s UK airports increased by 0.3 per cent to 10.9m in July.
Heathrow recorded its busiest-ever month, with 6.7m people making journeys through the airport – 3.5 per cent more than last year.
Sunday 18 July was Heathrow’s busiest-ever day, with 232,000 people passing through the airport.
Across BAA, the fastest growing market in July was Europe, with an increase of 2.9 per cent in passenger traffic combining both charter and scheduled flights.
Long-haul traffic was up by 0.5 per cent but domestic traffic was 4.6 per cent lower than last year. The main source of passenger growth at Heathrow was the European market, where additional capacity fuelled an increase of 9.5 per cent.
At Stansted, a near-eight per cent drop in seats offered produced a similar drop of 7.2 per cent in passengers, while in Scotland additional capacity helped to produce an overall increase of 6.6 per cent in passengers travelling to and from Europe. At the individual airports, Aberdeen’s traffic fell by 4.1 per cent, Edinburgh grew by 0.6 per cent and Glasgow recorded a drop of 3.6 per cent.
Southampton’s July numbers were down 1.4 per cent, while traffic at Naples increased by 6.1 per cent in the month.
BAA, which is owned by Spanish transport operator Ferrovial, was forced to sell off Gatwick Airport last year after regulators ordered its disposal. The company offloaded the airport to Global Infrastructure Partners for £1.5bn in December.
FAST FACTS | BAA
Heathrow had its busiest month on record in July with 6.7m people travelling through.
The number of European passengers shot up by almost ten per cent.
10.9m people went through BAA airports.