BAA said unrest in the Middle East had had only a ‘moderate’ impact on its traffic last month, with business from Heathrow and its three Scottish airports up on the same period of 2010.
However, at Stansted traffic slumped more than 6% as low-cost airlines shifted some of their operations to more competitive airports in Europe. Southampton saw a 9.5% drop in business due to a fall in domestic traffic.
Heathrow’s traffic grew by 0.5% in February, with good performance on European scheduled services, said BAA. Glasgow was up by 3.9% in total but by 13.1% on European services. Edinburgh was up 5.0% overall but by 20.7% on European routes. Aberdeen recorded a 4.9% gain.
Scotland – and Edinburgh in particular – benefited from rugby-related travel during the Six Nations Championship.
Across BAA, European scheduled traffic grew most strongly in February (up 1.4%) but there were falls in domestic traffic (down 2.0%) and North Atlantic traffic (down 1.5%). Other long haul routes were up by 0.6% overall, including increases of nearly 10% on Indian services from Heathrow.
Together, the company’s six airports handled a total of 7.1 million passengers in February – down 0.2% on the previous year.
By Linsey McNeill
