Popularity of long haul flights helped Heathrow owner BAA see a 1.5% rise in passengers handled in November to 10.8 million on the same month last year.
North Atlantic traffic was up by 5.9%, helped by a rise in UK and European originating traffic encouraged by the weaker dollar, while other long haul routes recorded a collective increase of 7%.
But UK domestic traffic was down 4.3% and European scheduled activity up by just 0.9%. European charter traffic was unchanged on a year ago.
As a result of some winter schedule cutbacks by Ryanair and Air Berlin, Stansted’s traffic declined by 6.3% in November.
In total the number of air transport movements at BAA airports was down 1.2% in November, with Scottish airports down by 4.1% and London area airports by 0.1%.
There were mixed results among individual airports. Heathrow continued recent recovery from the events of late 2006 with a 2.4% increase, while Gatwick was up by 6.2%, taking it to a 12 month total of 35 million passengers for the first time. Southampton grew by 2%.
Edinburgh’s 4.4% increase, attributable mainly to additional European scheduled traffic, took it past the 9 million passenger milestone.
But Glasgow’s traffic was down by 3.2% and Aberdeen by 2.3% lower, although this followed a strong result (+17.4%) in November last year.
Among the key markets, it was the longer haul routes that performed the strongest, BAA said.
by Phil Davies
