The BAA November Traffic Figures has shown that among the key markets, it was the longer haul routes that performed the strongest.

North Atlantic traffic was up by 5.9%, helped by a rise in UK and European originating traffic encouraged by the weaker dollar, while other long haul routes recorded a collective increase of 7%.

In contrast UK Domestic traffic was down 4.3% and European scheduled activity up by just 0.9%. European charter traffic was unchanged on a year ago.

BAA’s UK airports handled a total of 10.8 million passengers in November, an increase of 1.5% on the same month last year.

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There were mixed results among individual airports. Heathrow continued its recent recovery from the events of late 2006 with a 2.4% increase, while Gatwick was up by 6.2%, taking it to a 12 month total of 35 million passengers for the first time. Southampton grew by 2%.

As a result of some winter schedule cutbacks by Ryanair and Air Berlin, Stansted’s traffic decreased 6.3% in November.

In Scotland Edinburgh's 4.4% increase, attributable mainly to additional European scheduled traffic, took it past the 9 million passenger milestone. However Glasgow’s traffic was down by 3.2% and Aberdeen by 2.3% lower, although this followed an exceptionally strong result (+17.4%) in November last year.

In total the number of air transport movements at BAA airports was down 1.2% in November, within which figure the Scottish airports were down by 4.1% and the London area by 0.1%. Cargo tonnage continued its recent recovery at Heathrow with a 6.4% rise in November but of the other airports handling significant amounts of freight only Edinburgh (+9.6%) shared in this growth. Across the Group as a whole cargo activity was up by 3.1%.

(GK/JM)