Heathrow Airport saw over 70 million passengers pass through its terminals in the twelve month period to March 2012, the first time the airport has reached the milestone.
The record annual figure we helped by a 6.9 per cent increase in traffic in March this year compared to the same month in 2011, with 5.7 million passengers travelling through its terminals.
The airport passed the 60 million passenger mark in 1998, and BAA’s CEO Colin Matthews called the latest figures “a major milestone, demonstrating the resilience of the airport in an otherwise challenging economic environment”.
Matthews added that the record numbers were driven by increased load factors, and warned that “Heathrow continues to operate at 99.2 per cent capacity - placing constraints on airlines’ ability to introduce new flights to the emerging economies which are so vital to UK economic growth".
Elsewhere, year-on-year traffic was up 4.6 per cent at Glasgow, and 10.2 per cent at Aberdeen, but down 2.8 per cent at Edinburgh. BAA’s airports at Stansted and Southampton also saw a deline in traffic - down 4.7 per cent and 1.7 per cent respectively.
Reductions in domestic traffic were cited as one of the key drivers for the decline in figures at Edinburgh and Southampton.
For more information visit baa.com.
Report by Mark Caswell
