ACI, Airport Council International, has released figures showing that London, once again, is the centre of the world as far as air travel is concerned. In 2002 109m people moved through the three major London airports, up 3% from the previous year. The two Chicago airports saw 83m passengers, the same as 2001. Newark, Kennedy and La Guardia, the New York gateways were up 4.7% to 79m. Of the individual major European airports only Heathrow (+4.3%) and Amsterdam (+3%) showed any real growth, Gatwick dropping below 30m. What will happen in 2003 is anybody”s guess. 3.2b passengers in 2003 moved through the world”s 760 major airports, virtually the same as the previous year. But with war and SARS the major areas of growth, Asia/Pacific and the Middle East, will not produce expansion this year. In North America traffic dropped by 2.7% last year whilst the European Regions Airline Association (ERA) has reported passenger growth of 9.1% for the year 2002. This compares to 3.4% for 2001. Passenger kilometre (RPK) also achieved a growth of 9.3% (4.5% in 2001). It must be noted, however, that these figures have been affected by the greater than normal increase in the last quarter of 2002 due to the reduced traffic reported following 11 September 2001. www.airports.org