Passenger numbers fall 1.7% at Southampton airport (From Romsey Advertiser)

Passenger numbers fall 1.7% at Southampton airport

2:02pm Wednesday 11th April 2012 in Hampshire Business By Matt Smith, Politics and business reporter

Passenger numbers fall 1.7% at Southampton airport

Southampton airport saw a 1.7 per cent fall in passenger numbers in March, with a drop in flights driving the decline.

The monthly fall to 127,900 passengers in March came as flight numbers fell 8.5 per cent in the month.

Airport bosses blamed bad weather, mainly in the Channel Islands, which forced some flights to be combined and the loss of a Flybe route to Brussels, which is being resuming next week by Eastern Airways.

Numbers at Southampton airport for the past 12 months rose 2.8 per to 1.7m, although the airport is still some way behind the record 2 million passengers it welcomed in 2007 and 2008, before the economic downturn.

In its latest figures BAA reported the UK's busiest airport, Heathrow, saw 70 million passengers pass through its terminals in a 12-month period for the first time in March.

Heathrow, which has five terminals, dealt with 5.7 million passengers in March, a 6.9 per cent rise on the previous year as pre-Easter traffic occurred in March, rather than April.

Glasgow recorded a 4.6 per cent increase in traffic, while Aberdeen saw a 10.2 per cent rise.

Stansted and Edinburgh were down 4.7 per cent and 2.8 per cent respectively.

BAA airports - Southampton, Heathrow, Stansted, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen - saw an overall 4 per cent rise in passengers in the month to 8.6 million as growth at Glasgow and Aberdeen was offset by declines at Southampton, Stansted and Edinburgh.

In its trading update BAA gave no update on its latest appeal against the Competition Commission's ruling that it must sell Stansted in Essex.