10.08.05
The rate of growth at BAA's UK airports slowed in July, following the London bombings. But passenger numbers still hit record levels, figures released by the company revealed.
BAA's seven UK airports handled almost 14.6 million passengers in July, a 2.6% increase on the same month last year. This compares to a growth rate of 4.3% in June.
The three London airports saw overall growth of 1.7% to 12.2 million, and were the worst impacted by the terrorist attacks. Passengers at Stansted, where rapidly-expanding Ryanair and easyJet have operations, rose 6.1% to 2.17 million.
At Gatwick passengers increased 3.3% to 3.5 million, during one of the airport's busiest months. At Heathrow, the world's busiest international airport, which is suffering capacity restraints until Terminal 5 opens, fell 0.6% to 6.4 million.
As last month, the biggest growth rate came at Southampton airport, where 195,000 people travelled through the terminal. The 31% growth in July follows groth of 30.9% in June, albeit on small passenger numbers compared to BA's larger airports.
BAA's three Scottish airports, grew by 5.8% to 2.17 million. An expanded range of low cost scheduled flights was largely responsible for the growth.
The smallest of the three, Aberdeen, had the strongest year on year growth - up 8.1% to 276,000. Edinburgh had 845,000 passengers, 6.2% more than July 2004, and Glasgow handled 1.05 million, a 4.8% jump.
BAA said all markets, except the European charter sector, showed a rise in traffic. Across the 7 airports, BAA said North Atlantic traffic increased 1%, other long haul - particularly to the Far East - grew 7.5%, Irish traffic by 8%, European scheduled by 3.8% and domestic by 1.4%.
The European charter market continued to suffer, as people switch to scheduled or low cost airlines for their holiday flights, falling by 5.5%.
BAA said it was difficult to measure the exact impact of the attacks, although domestic UK travel immediately after July 7 may have taken the biggest hit, a spokesman said. Overall BAA said that it expects passenger growth to ease off record levels to 3.5 percent this year.
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