UK. Despite the major disruption to its services caused by the 10 August terror alert, BAA’s UK airports generated a +0.3% year-on-year increase in passenger numbers to 14.3 million in the month.
Despite the dramatic tightening of security at all UK airports on 10 August, fewer than 2% of a total of 116,000 flights were cancelled at BAA’s UK airports.
Passenger numbers fell -5% against forecast with a loss of revenue and incurred costs for the month of £13 million, which BAA said included a number of ‘one-off’ costs specifically related to the immediate period following the introduction of the new security measures.
The market most affected by the disruption was UK domestic where passenger numbers were down -7.6%. European scheduled traffic was up +4.5%. European charter traffic fell -6.8% although this was largely due to continuing competition from low-cost scheduled services. North Atlantic traffic fell -3.3% year-on-year, while other long haul traffic grew +8.8%, in line with recent trends.
Among individual airports, Heathrow and Glasgow both saw passenger numbers fall by -2.2%, whilst Edinburgh saw a decrease of -1.3%. Stansted continued to see good growth with a +4.9% gain. Gatwick rose +2.1%, and Aberdeen improved on recent trends with an increase of +8.1%. Southampton recorded growth of +1%.
The number of air transport movements recorded increased +0.1% on last year, when BA also suffered flight cancellations as a result of the Gate Gourmet dispute.
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