A total of 9.1 million passengers travelled through British Airport Authority’s airports in April, a 0.1% increase on the same month last year. BAA Chief Executive Colin Matthews said: “These are encouraging figures for Heathrow and BAA’s other airports. However, the modest growth in passenger numbers at Heathrow, the UK’s only hub airport, comes from larger and fuller aircraft, not from more routes and frequencies to emerging markets. This lack of connectivity is damaging the UK economy.”
Heathrow’s load factors continued to increase, rising 0.1 percentage points in April, to 76.4%. The average number of seats per aircraft was also up, rising 1.1% to 197.6. Both increases are consistent with the airport having reached its cap on the number of flights.
Traffic between London Heathrow and Brazil, India and China continued to grow on last year, with the highest increase coming from Brazil at 11.7%.
