Airport passenger numbers plummet in 2009 as Britons stay at home
showing that they carried 4.7 million passengers fewer than in 2008.
demand for overseas holidays drop and a number of airlines ground planes to save
money.
both Ryanair and easyJet cut back on capacity.
the economy at its lowest ebb, but weather forecasters were predicting a “barbecue
summer”.
in the second half of the year, which slowed down the rate of decline compared
to the first six months of 2009.
and Aberdeen having been forced to sell Gatwick by the Competition Commission.
Last year these six airports handled 106.9 million passengers.
2009 as a “game of two halves”.
summer timetables because of the downturn, but saw a recovery as the recession
eased.
hit by the collapse of Globespan at the end of the year.
chief executive.
but there are more challenging times ahead in 2010.”
for about 150,000 passengers. Heathrow was up +1.2% on Dec 2008. Stansted declined
-2.6% in December, the “best” performance since March 2008. Glasgow was down
-8.8%, Edinburgh down -4.4%, Aberdeen down -9.4%, Southampton down -5.9%. Cargo
tonnage was up 20% on last year. For the 6 airports, for all of 2009, passengers
were down -4.2% and cargo down -7.7% on 2008.
figures for 2007 :
Christmas period – BAA’s airports handle more flights in 2007 than last year
10.1.2008 (Holiday Extras)
Passenger numbers at BAA’s UK airports were up 0.7% in December over the same
month in 2006. Total passenger numbers for 2007 at the seven airports were almost
150 million, an increase of 1.6% compared to 2006.
In December:
– Long haul flights to North America saw passenger numbers up 6.3% from BAA airports.
– There was also a 2.5% increase on other long haul routes.
– At Heathrow passenger numbers were up by 3.2%.
– At Gatwick passengers were up by 2.7%.
– At Southampton airport passengers grew by 2.6%.
– Edinburgh grew by 3.6%.
– At Stansted there were 8.6% fewer passengers as Ryanair and Air Berlin axed some
flights.
– However, European scheduled traffic was unchanged on 2006, passengers on European
charter flights fell by 1.7%.
– Passenger numbers on domestic flights declined by 3.5% during December.
– Glasgow was down, by 5%.
– Aberdeen was down by 2.2%.
– Ryanair saw passenger numbers increase by a whopping 18% in December compared
to the previous year. Total passenger numbers were up from 3.36 to 3.95 million
people.
– easyJet few 2.64 million more passengers, up 9.9% on December 2006. (And as
it introduced more new flights from various UK airports the total number of passengers
carried by easyJet in 2007 rose by an impressive 13.5% to 38.2 million during
the year). However, easyJet’s load factor fell from 84.6% in 2006 to to 83.5%
in 2007 as a whole, and only 78.9% in December.