BAA's airports Feb-2100 traffic figures

BAA's UK airports handled a total of 7.13 million passengers in February, an increase of 2.4% on the same month last year. February 2009 saw passenger traffic affected by heavy snow across the UK.

Heathrow traffic grew 5.3%, as it was largely free of snow in February 2010 and remains more resilient than other UK airports. The underlying figure - adjusted to take account of the weather problems last year - is 2.7%.

Stansted's traffic declined by 4.5% compared to last February, demonstrating that the market remains challenging. Southampton grew 5.9% with most of the gain attributable to the recovery from bad weather this time last year.

Glasgow (down 5.0%) and Aberdeen (down 4.6%) were relatively unaffected by the snow of last year but Edinburgh (up 3.5%) gained not only because of weather but also from additional rugby related traffic. Traffic at Naples grew by 5.4%.

Colin Matthews, BAA's chief executive officer, said: "Heathrow remains resilient and other airports are beginning to see encouraging signs. However traffic remains depressed, reflecting tough conditions in the economy generally and in aviation specifically."

For the first time in two years, domestic traffic across BAA was up, by 1.1%. European scheduled services recorded a 2.6% increase and North Atlantic traffic was up by 2.7% despite several periods of heavy snow in the Mid-West and North Eastern parts of the US.

Other long haul traffic rose by 4.0% overall with strong contributions from services to China (up 6.8%), the Middle East (up 11.1%) and South America (up 17.6%).

In total the Group recorded a drop of 0.2% in the number of air transport movements (Heathrow up 2.1%) and an increase of 23.2% in the tonnage of cargo handled. This latter result represents the third consecutive month of double-digit increases in cargo and closely matches experience of the global air-freight industry.