UK air traffic continues upward trend

NATS, the UK air navigation services specialist, has released figures suggesting a continuous upward trend in UK air traffic for eight consecutive months.

The latest air traffic figures reveal NATS handled 224,716 flights in June 2015 a 2.5 percent increase on the same period in 2014. This confirms an ongoing month by month trend in the rise of UK air traffic.

According to NATS internal traffic data, transatlantic arrivals and departures remained buoyant and grew by 6.1 percent in June 2015 compared to June 2014. Non-transatlantic overflights also increased with a growth of 6.1 percent. Domestic flights increased by 4.3 percent, which is the eighth consecutive month of growth recorded for this sector.

The growth of domestic flights has been attributed to additional routes between London and Scottish airports as well as further routes from the Isle of Man, Southampton and Manchester.

The increase in domestic flights can be partly attributed to new routes being added between London and Scottish airports, as well as additional routes from the Isle of Man, Southampton and Manchester. In addition, the absence of inclement weather in June contributed towards growth in all sectors.

Growth was reported at eight of the 14 NATS managed airports. London City Airport witnessed the greatest increase with a growth of 10.2 percent, while Glasgow and Stansted airports continued their run of strong growth with an increase of 9.7 percent and 6.1 percent respectively.

Figures also reveal there were 22,410 minutes of NATS-attributable en-route delays in June, which is a 6.7 percent increase on the comparable delay performance recorded in June 2014.

Juliet Kennedy, NATS Operations Director at Swanwick, said: “The continued growth in air traffic is really good to see. Unfortunately, June also saw an increase in NATS-attributable delay, some of which was due to spikes of very high demand that exceeded capacity on a number of sectors of airspace. This is still less than the European average, however we are working hard to ensure that this figure decreases in the coming months.”