11.02.10
The severe weather last month led to a 3.1 percent drop in passengers using BAA's six UK airports. Without the weather disruption, the airports operator estimates the drop would have been just 0.3 percent.
BAA's UK airports handled 7.2 million passengers in January. Heathrow saw a 0.5 percent drop in passengers, however without the bad weather, which caused the loss of around 145,000 passengers, traffic would have grown by an estimated 2.5 percent, BAA said.
The passenger decline at Stansted was 5.6 percent; at Southampton 9.7 percent; Glasgow 12.2 percent; Edinburgh 7.4 percentand Aberdeen 13.6 percent. At each airport BAA said that a significant part of the drop can be attributed to the snow. As in December, Glasgow and Edinburgh airports were also hit by the collapse of the Scottish airline Flyglobespan.
By market, North Atlantic passenger traffic was down 3.8 percent and scheduled European passengers traffic was down 0.3 percent. There were rises in South American (9.6 percent), and Middle East (9.5 percent) passenger traffic.
BAA chief executive Colin Matthews said: ‘There is no doubt that the market remains a difficult one, and the snow didn't help. 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 again underlines Heathrow's role as the UK's only hub airport.’
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