BAA”S seven UK airports handled a total of 9.4m passengers in December 2002, an increase of 15.3% over December 2001, reflecting a strong Christmas and new year holiday period. In the full calendar year (1 January 2002 to 31 December 2002), the airports handled 126.6m passengers, up 3.9% on the year 2001, and 2.3% up on 2000. Among individual airports for the full calendar year 2002, compared with 2001, Heathrow added 4.3% to its traffic (2% below 2000), Gatwick traffic fell by 5.1% (7.6% down on 2000) and Stansted added 17.5% (35.3% up on 2000). The main reason for the fall in traffic at Heathrow and Gatwick against 2000, is the continued weakness in traffic in the North Atlantic market. Among individual airports in December 2002, compared with December 2001, Stansted showed the strongest growth, with a 38.6% increase, followed by Edinburgh, up 18.4%, and Heathrow up 13.5%. Gatwick was 9.6% up on last year but is still 8.4% down against December 2000 due to the ongoing impact of 11 September. Strong growth was sustained at the Scottish airports generally, which added 12.7% in December 2002, with growth of 9.8% at Glasgow and 6.3% at Aberdeen. In December all major markets recorded increases over December 2001. While domestic traffic was 19.1% higher, North Atlantic and European scheduled markets were up 18.0% and 18.3% respectively. Other long haul routes added 8.4% more passengers and European charters recorded a gain of 5.8%.
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