London airports outpace UK’s regional gateways

Airports in the capital and larger regional facilities led a 2.3% rise in traffic across UK airports in the first half of 2013.

An analysis of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) airport figures reveals a sharp contrast between London airports and their regional counterparts, says Peter Kenworthy, aviation projects director at Mott MacDonald.

While air traffic across the UK nudged up 2.3% on the same period last year, London hubs gained 3.0% more passengers and other airports only 1.4%.

In line with these trends, London airports increased their share of total UK traffic in the first half of 2013 to 62.1%, up from 61.7% for the same period last year.

If this trend continues over the rest of 2013, London will recover the share of UK traffic it last held more than 10 years ago, said Kenworthy.

Prior to the 2007 peak in UK air travel, regional airports grew faster than London airports. But the economic downturn has hit regional airports hardest.

The 10 largest UK gateways, of which 6 are outside London, also outperformed smaller airports, with a 2.6% traffic increase to take 84% of the market.

In percentage terms, Manchester headed the chart with a 5.1% rise, ahead of Stansted, where a 3.5% uptrend finally ended its slide since 2008.

In absolute terms, though, Heathrow outstripped the other large airports. Its 808,000 additional travellers accounted for a third of growth among the top 10 gateways.

But the hub’s new traffic was heavily focused on European routes.

"A staggering 80% of Heathrow’s traffic growth in 2013 has come from European markets, reaffirming the short-term integration plan of former bmi slots into the BA portfolio and the increasing of seat capacity on each short-haul slot pair," said Kenworthy.

On domestic routes, traffic was static, despite new services. Without 56,000 passengers carried by BA on its new Leeds/Bradford, Heathrow’s domestic traffic would have dropped 2%, said Kenworthy.