British airports operator BAA said today its seven British airports handled 8.8 million passengers last month to post a 10.7 per cent rise over January 2002.
The company said the increase was helped by strong traffic over the Christmas and New Year holidays.
The airports with the highest concentration of low cost airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet, and Go provided the largest gains. Stansted grew 30.5 per cent, carrying 1.15 million passengers in January.
Strong growth continued at two of the Scottish airports, which also handle low cost carriers. Numbers using Edinburgh grew by 16.1 per cent to 499,000; Glasgow rose 10.2 per cent to 476,000 passengers in the month.
Aberdeen lost 2.8 per cent of its passenger numbers compared to the previous year. The airport handled 175,000 passengers in January.
Britain's two major airports - Heathrow and Gatwick - also registered a rise in passenger numbers during January. Heathrow was up 7.1 per cent, carrying 4.7 million passengers; Gatwick rose 10 per cent to 1.8 million people.
But BAA said Gatwick had still not fully recovered from the September 11th terrorist attacks and their aftermath. For the 12 month period to January 31st, Gatwick handled 3.6 per cent fewer passengers and 12.2 per cent less cargo than the 12 months to January 2002.
All BAA's major markets recorded increases compared with January 2002. Domestic and European scheduled traffic saw gains of 14.9 per cent and 13.3 per cent respectively.
North Atlantic routes increased by 9 per cent, but BAA said they had not yet recovered to levels recorded before September 11th. The two-year comparison shows the North Atlantic market was down 2 per cent.
PA