A 27% rise in business tickets sales helped increase passenger figures on Eurostar to record numbers
The high-speed rail service between London and Paris and Brussels said it carried 2.15m passengers in the third quarter of 2006, a rise of 9.9% for the same period in 2005.
It also reported a 21% increase on 2005 figures in sales revenue to £130m and record punctuality at 94.1%.
The train company said the passenger figures for July to September were swelled by "thousands of extra passengers who switched from plane to train" after the disruption at UK airports in August.
Eurostar said that its punctuality "continues convincingly to outperform the punctuality of rival airlines."
It also said that environmental concerns were a growing issue with an increasing number of passengers asking about environmental impact of their journeys.
Simon Montague, Eurostar's director of communications said: "It has been an outstanding third quarter for Eurostar.
"The surge in traveller numbers has been driven by the delays at UK airports. Business travellers in particular are continuing to switch to Eurostar from the airlines."
On the environment, Mr Montague said he expected "concern about transport emissions to become an increasingly important factor in passengers' travel decisions in future."
London City Airport sold
London City Airport was sold to a consortium of AIG Financial Products and Global Infrastructure Partners for an estimated £750m.
AIG is subsidiary of the American International Group while Global Infrastructure is a joint venture between the Credit Suisse bank and General Electric's GE Infrastructure Fund.
The consortium bought the airport in London's Docklands from Irish businessman Dermot Desmond who paid £14.50m in 1995 for the then loss-making enterprise.
Under the purchase, which has to be cleared by the EU, AIG Financial Products and Global Infrastructure will each have a 50% stake.
It is the second major sale of airports in the UK this year. In the summer Spanish company Ferrovial bought BAA which runs seven UK airports, among them Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.