June 2012 traffic figures – BAA’s airports

Passenger numbers continue upward trend, despite economic uncertainty 9.1 million passengers passed through BAA’s five airports in June 2012, up 0.7% on June 2011. This included an increase of 1.6% at Heathrow to more than 6.2 million passengers, a record for the month. Around 33.6 million passengers have already passed through the airport in the first six months of 2012, a record for the first half of the year, with 47.4 million travelling through BAA’s airports as a whole. Cargo movement across the group was up 0.2% on the same month last year, a slight improvement on recent trends and a more positive situation than seen across the European air freight industry over the last few months.

Stansted saw traffic fall 3.4% in June compared with last year, whilst Glasgow reported an increase of 4.5%. Aberdeen continued its strong underlying performance, with its 1.3% increase in traffic occurring despite weather disruptions during the month. The net result was an increase across the two Scottish airports of 3.5%.

Load factor in the month was above 80%, a record for June and up 1.0 percentage point on June 2011.

Growth in European traffic at Heathrow has moderated during 2012 with resilience in markets such as Germany, France and Switzerland offset by weakness in southern European markets such as Italy, Greece and Portugal. In contrast, the BRIC markets are performing strongly with, for example, traffic with Brazil growing by more than 20% over the first half of the year and the recent introduction of the new China Southern route to Guangzhou, which took eight years to come to fruition, having an immediate positive effect on passenger numbers between China and Heathrow.

BAA Chief Executive Colin Matthews said: “Continued growth in passenger numbers are evidence of BAA’s consistent performance in a challenging economic climate. But the contrast between the upward trend in passenger numbers to the BRIC economies and the downward trend for those countries most affected by the Eurozone crisis, once again shines the light on the importance to the UK economy of building direct connections with the BRIC countries.”

View traffic statistics tables for BAA airports in June 2012 (PDF format)