British airport operator BAA boosted the battered airline industry today by revealing that Heathrow enjoyed its third-busiest month on record during July.
The London airport saw passenger numbers improve by 0.9% on a year earlier, while there were smaller declines at Gatwick and Stansted.
Across its seven UK airports, BAA handled 14.5 million passengers, a fall of 2.4% on July 2008, compared with decreases of 5.9% in June and 7.3% in May.
BAA reported a return to growth of 1.2% in European scheduled traffic and 4.8% in long-haul traffic, excluding North Atlantic flights. UK domestic traffic was 4.8% lower and European charters fell 18.6%.
The operator said today's traffic figures provided further evidence of stabilisation in passenger demand. Heathrow's result of 6.5 million passengers in July took its total for the year to date to 37.7 million, a fall of 3% on a year earlier.
At Gatwick the reduction on last year was cut from 7.6% in June to 4.8% in July, largely thanks to a 5.8% increase in European schedule traffic.
Stansted's improvement saw a drop of 11.5% in June reduced to 5.7% in July, despite cuts in capacity by low-cost operators.
In Scotland, where the company has three airports, Edinburgh's traffic grew by 5.6%, the fourth consecutive month the airport has recorded growth.
BAA also said Heathrow recorded its highest ever figure for the average number of passengers per aircraft - at 162. This was after a 3% reduction in the number of flights and a 0.9% increase in passenger numbers.
