BAA passengers up 0.8%; Heathrow record July
11.08.11
Heathrow had a record 6.9m passengers in July, up 2.5% on last year, as BAA reported growth of 0.8% across its UK airports. The month also included the busiest day in Heathrow's history - Sunday July 31 - and 7 of its top 10 days for passenger numbers were recorded in the month.
Heathrow' saw domestic passengers down 13.3% from a year earlier, thanks to a 16% cut in capacity by airlines, but international air traffic more than made up the shortfall, led by a 5.4% increase to North America and an 80% surge to Brazil. At 84.7%, its average load factor (proportion of available aircraft seats filled) was the highest ever achieved. The total number of passengers at Heathrow during the 12 months to the end of July exceeded 68.5m for the first time.
BAA's three Scottish airports all reported passenger growth, with Edinburgh up 3.3% to just short of a million passengers. Glasgow was up by 0.5%, due largely to a 45.7% increase on scheduled European flights. Aberdeen saw growth in domestic traffic and even faster growth in international traffic, which helped it report an overall increase of 8.7%.
At Stansted passengers fell by 7.2% to 1.9m, even though it achieved its most efficient ever load factor of 88.5%. No explanation was given for the fall, but we assume it reflects lower capacity from airlines including Ryanair. Southampton returned to growth with a 2.4% increase.
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