Last month’s severe weather led to a three per cent drop in passengers using BAA airports such as Heathrow.
Without the weather disruption, the airports operator estimated the drop would have been 0.3% rather than 3.1%.
The decline meant BAA handled 7.2 million passengers in January.
Heathrow saw a 0.5% drop in passengers 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%, according to BAA.
The decline at Stansted was 5.6%; at Southampton 9.7%; Glasgow 12.2%; Edinburgh 7.4%; Aberdeen 13.6%.
At each airport a significant part of the drop can be attributed to the snow, BAA said.
As in December, Glasgow and Edinburgh were also impacted by the collapse of the airline Flyglobespan.
North Atlantic traffic was down 3.8% and scheduled European traffic was down 0.3%.
There were rises travel to South America (9.6%) and in the Middle East (9.5%).
BAA chief executive Colin Matthews 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."
by Phil Davies
