UK airport numbers boosted by sales drive

A New Year sales drive by airlines helped British airports operator BAA to hike passenger numbers last month, it said today.

More aggressive marketing by airlines is believed to have driven rises in traffic at Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted in January, BAA said.

The group’s seven UK airports handled 9.9 million passengers during the month, up 7.4% on the same month last year.

All airports recorded gains, with Heathrow lifting 6.1%, Gatwick up 10.8% and Stansted adding 8.6%.

BAA’s three Scottish airports saw an overall increase of 6.2% to about 1.2 million passengers while traffic through Southampton airport rose by 21.7% to 99,900.

BAA said Aberdeen was the best Scottish performer, rising 8.3% to 186,400 on the back of new services and a strong comparison with January 2004, when severe storms hit flights.

Figures from National Air Traffic Services (NATS) also provided evidence of the rise in traffic, showing that flights handled by NATS rose 4.9% to 197,987 during the month.

Its Manchester control centre reported the largest growth, with flight numbers up 7.3%.

BAA said North Atlantic and other long haul flights performed strongly, despite the impact of the Asian tsunami.

Passenger numbers on North Atlantic services lifted 5.6% and those on other long distance flights were up 11.1%.

Low fares services continued to boost the European scheduled and Irish markets, with these sectors each increasing by 8.3% in January. European charter traffic fell 1.6% overall.

The figures represent continued growth for BAA, which in common with other aviation industry players has been recovering from the setbacks of Sars, the Iraq war and terrorism in previous years.

Last month, the group reported an 18.1% rise in pre-tax profits to £521m (€756.6m) in the nine months to December 31, with chief executive Mike Clasper highlighting achievements including a pay settlement with unions and the completion of more than half of terminal five at Heathrow.