BAA’s UK airports handled 9.6 million passengers in February, an increase of0.8% over the same month last year. The underlying trend is distorted by theadditional leap year day in 2004. Stripped of the extra day, the underlying increase for February 2005 is 4.8%.
On the same like-for-like basis, excluding the extra day in 2004, key markets performed well. The strongest growth was on Other Long Haul routes where traffic increased 9.5% while North Atlantic markets added 5.1%. Low cost travel continued to benefit Irish and European scheduled routes with Irish traffic growing 8.6% and European scheduled traffic rising 5.4%. Domestic traffic grew 1.3% while European charter traffic continued to decline, falling 4.4% against
the previous year.

On a like-for-like basis, Heathrow was up 3.3%, while Gatwick’s strong
scheduled markets offset the weak European charter market to provide an overall increase of 9.5%. Stansted rose by 4.0% and Southampton by 2.2%.

In Scotland like-for-like results showed strong scheduled traffic offset weak charter markets to give an overall increase of 4.3%. Glasgow’s like-for-like result was 3.7% higher, while Edinburgh was up 3.2% and Aberdeen up 9.8%.

In total, air transport movements at BAA airports increased 3.1% on a
like-for-like basis (0.1% lower when compared against a 29 day February 2004), while cargo tonnage increased 1.3% (2.7% lower against a 29 day February 2004).
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