BAA`s seven UK airports continued to show underlying improvement…
BAA`s seven UK airports continued to show underlying improvement in traffic, handling a total of 11.7 million passengers in May, an increase of 7.8% over the same month last year.
Heathrow recovered well from its depressed figures of a year ago with a 12.4% increase in May, taking its total over the last 12 months past the 65 million mark for the first time. At all other BAA airports, strong scheduled traffic growth was more than sufficient to offset weak charter results. Gatwick added 2.9% whilst the fastest overall growth was at Southampton, up 24.8% and Stansted, up 6.8%. Later today, Stansted will celebrate passing the 20 million passenger a year milestone.
Among key markets there was consistent, strong growth across the airports in European scheduled traffic, up 10%, while North Atlantic traffic added 18.1% overall, due to continue strong recovery at Heathrow, Gatwick and Glasgow. Other long haul routes recorded a collective increase of 24.6%, helped by recovery from a SARS affected result in May 2003. The only significant market weakness was in European charter traffic, which dipped 13.3% on last year, although the slightly later.
Spring half term holiday meant that some of the associated travel will have moved to early June this year.
In total the number of air transport movements was 4.0% up on May last year, while cargo activity continued to grow at an accelerated rate with an increase of 8.8% in May.
| Terminal Passengers (000`s) |
Month | % change |
Financial Year to date |
% change |
*12 months to May 04 |
% change |
| Heathrow | 5,526.5 | 12.4 | 11,143.6 | 132.6 | 65,598.5 | 4.9 |
| Gatwick | 2,693.2 | 2.9 | 5,119.8 | 5.4 | 30,319.7 | 1.4 |
| Stansted | 1,716.7 | 6.8 | 3,419.0 | 18.8 | 19,949.5 | 17.2 |
| London | 9,936.3 | 8.7 | 19,682.5 | 12.2 | 115,867.7 | 5.8 |
| Southampton | 129.6 | 24.8 | 251.6 | 30.1 | 1,431.1 | 68.2 |
| Glasgow | 775.5 | 0.4 | 1,411.9 | 3.3 | 8,190.3 | 2.5 |
| Edinburgh | 667.8 | 3.8 | 1,330.0 | 6.5 | 7,659.8 | 6.9 |
| Aberdeen | 218.8 | 0.5 | 438.1 | 3.2 | 2,546.2 | -0.4 |
| Scottish | 1,662.1 | 1.8 | 3,180.0 | 4.6 | 18,396.3 | 3.9 |
| BAA Total | 11,727.9 | 7.8 | 23,114.1 | 11.3 | 135,695.3 | 6.0 |
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
