British airports operator BAA says it handled a total of 7.5 million passengers in January, an increase of 3.8% from the same month last year.
BAA said the strongest growth was in domestic traffic, up 8.3%, as this was affected more than other markets by snow across the UK in the same month last year.
European scheduled traffic was up by 2.7% and North Atlantic traffic was 3.2% higher. Other long haul routes were up by 4.5% overall, including increases of 30% on routes to China. BAA said the month was Heathrow's strongest January long-haul performance in its history.
Heathrow recorded an increase of 4.6% to 5.05 million passengers. Roughly half of this increase was due to a comparison with the bad weather in January 2010.
Stansted was down by 5.8% on last year, but BAA's three Scottish airports and Southampton recorded increases compared with January 2010. Edinburgh recorded the largest increase in traffic, bolstered by new scheduled routes to Europe and North Africa.
