The CAA has published figures that show UK airports handled 229m passengers in 2005, an increase of over 6% on 2004.
Passenger traffic at the five main London airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City - grew by 4% to a total of 134m in the year, easily the world”s biggest hub. Numbers at the UK's regional airports increased 9%. Among the ten largest regional airports, the fastest growing was Liverpool, up by 32% and Bristol 13% plus. Air transport movements (landings and take-offs of commercial aircraft) grew by 6% from 2004 to a total of 2.3m. Over the last ten years terminal passenger numbers at regional airports have doubled from 47m in 1995 to 95m in 2005. Over the same period traffic at the London airports has grown from 83m passengers in 1995 to 134m in 2005.
In 2005, UK airport passengers were predominantly bound for, or arriving from, destinations in Europe. The number of passengers on flights to or from Europe totalled 129m, an increase of 8m (6%) on 2004. The largest growth was on outes to Italy, up by 1m passengers (an increase of 11%), Ireland, up by 0.9m (9%) and Poland, up by 0.8m (85%).
The next most popular destinations were either other UK airports or North America; each of these destinations accounted for over 20m passengers. There were 26m passengers on UK domestic flights, up by 4% (0.9m) on 2004; and 22m North America passengers, up by 3% (0.6m). Despite this increase, passenger numbers between the UK and North America have not quite returned to their year 2000 levels of 23m.
It does seem that in spite of doom predicted by some people, the UK, and London in particular, is holding its own as far as long haul international traffic is concerned. On any given day there are 28 flights from the British capital to New York. From Amsterdam the figure is four, Frankfurt seven and Paris ten. If you want to go very early, or arrive very late the only way is via Heathrow. Whilst never highlighted, one of the reasons for the failure of Concorde was that the French could never match British Airways passenger numbers.
All this does not mean we should be smug. London is now being by-passed by the ultra long range jets. The major Middle East airlines are attempting to focus on their (usually owned) hub airports for business to North America. London will lose out. Whilst the figures are still good, this must be put down to growth. One hundred years ago the London docks were the centre of world trade. Parallels are not required. They failed due to large ships and containerisation.This will not happen at Heathrow but complacency must not be the order of the day. BAA, under its present management, appears to have every thing under control. The London airports need to concentrate on staying ahead and not having it efforts disrupted by outside interests who have a different agenda.
Malcolm Ginsberg