11 October 2010
Across all of BAA’s UK airports, 9.988 million passengers travelled during September 2010, which is an increase of 3.3% on September 2009. Heathrow Airport recorded its busiest ever September with 6.22 million people flying from the airport, an increase of 7.6% over September 2009, which is the largest year-on-year monthly increase since July 2004.
Heathrow’s Brazil, Russia, India, and China (BRIC) routes to destinations not served from any other UK airport saw significant growth compared with September 2009. Brazil rose 27.1% to 31,546 passengers, China rose 10.3% to 58,330 and Russia increased by 23.7% to 70,021. India fell by 0.3% to 178,607. Travellers from Heathrow to North America increased by 6.5% to 1.44 million, with South America up 16.4%. The most popular routes were New York, Dubai and Dublin.
European scheduled destinations from Heathrow continued to grow, increasing 11.7% to 2.35 million. The most popular routes were to Heathrow’s main competitors, which are all hub airports: Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Paris.
Edinburgh rose 2.2% to 873,195 while Southampton remained level to 174,570 from 174,501. The decline in passenger numbers at Stansted slowed from 6.1% in August to 4.3%. Glasgow’s traffic declined by 5.7%, and Aberdeen by 5.1%, but these declines are contracting as airlines fill the gaps in services left by the collapse of flyglobespan.
Cargo imports and exports continued to beat pre-recession levels, rising 11.8% across the group to 144,469 tonnes. Heathrow Airport shipped 123,680 tonnes of freight, up 12.2% on September 2009.