The number of passengers travelling through Britain's major airports dipped last year, figures out today show.
The seven UK airports run by the BAA company, which include Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, handled 145.8 million passengers in 2008 - a drop of 2.8% compared with 2007.
At 66.9 million, the number of passengers using Heathrow Airport last year was down 1.4%, while Gatwick dipped 2.8% and Stansted fell 6%.
The UK government is due this month to decide whether to give the go-ahead to expansion at Heathrow in the form of a third runway and a sixth terminal. Expansion would increase the number of take-off and landings from around 480,000 a year to 702,000.
There was a fall in passenger numbers last year at all four of BAA's other UK airports, with Southampton down 0.8%, Glasgow dipping 6.8%, Edinburgh declining 0.5% and Aberdeen going down 3.5%.
The figures for December alone showed that the seven airports handled 10.18 million passengers - 6.9% down on the December 2007 total.
Heathrow numbers last month were down only 2.3%, but Gatwick passenger numbers fell 13.8%, while Stansted was down 13.0%, Southampton fell 5.4%, Glasgow decreased 10.7%, Edinburgh was down 2,5% and Aberdeen declined 3.2%.
'We expect, on the evidence of historic economic downturns and the resulting effect on air traffic, that the long-term prospects for growth remain good and that passenger volumes will recover in due course,' BAA said in a statement.
