BAA Reports January 2010 Passenger Numbers

Poor weather in January 2010 adversely affected passenger numbers at BAA's UK airports.

 At Heathrow there was a drop of 0.5% in passenger numbers compared to last January. Without the bad weather causing the loss of around 145,000 passengers at the airport, traffic would have grown by an estimated 2.5%.

Similarly, the figures for BAA as a whole show a drop of 3.1%, meaning we handled 7.2 million passengers in January. Without the disruption it is estimated the drop would have been 0.3%.

At Stansted the drop was 5.6%, at Southampton 9.7%, Glasgow 12.2%, Edinburgh 7.4% and Aberdeen 13.6%. At each airport a significant part of the drop can be attributed to the snow. As in December, Glasgow and Edinburgh were also impacted by the collapse of the airline Flyglobespan.

By market, North Atlantic traffic was down 3.8% and scheduled European traffic was down 0.3%. There were rises in South America (9.6%), and in the Middle East (9.5%).

Cargo traffic continued the recovery first seen in October, rising in January by 13.9%.

Traffic at Naples rose by 11.6%.

olin Matthews, chief executive of BAA said, "There is no doubt that the market remains a difficult one, and certainly the snow didn't help, but, 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 once again underlines Heathrow's role as the UK's only hub airport."

See recent travel news from: Travel News Asia, BAA, Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh, January 2010