Air passenger numbers down
Updated on 16 March 2009
The number of people flying from UK airports fell last year for the first time since 1991.
The figures from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) show the decline was particularly sharp in the last months of 2008 as the credit crunch began to bite.
UK airports handled 235 million passengers in 2008 - a 1.9 per cent fall on the 2007 figure.
There were four million fewer passengers passing through the airports in October-December 2008 than in the same period last year.
It is only the fourth time since the end of the Second World War that there has been a year-on-year decline.
At London's airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City - the annual fall last year was 2 per cent, with 1.4 million fewer passengers using Stansted (a 6.0 per cent decline on the 2007 total).
Luton, however, handled 2.6 per cent more passengers and there was a 12 per cent rise in the number of passengers passing through London City airport.
At the regional airports, passenger numbers fell 1.8 per cent to 98 million. Manchester, the largest regional airport, saw passenger numbers fall by 3.8 per cent but Birmingham airport grew by 4.8 per cent.
In 2008, a total 25 million passengers took domestic flights - a fall of 4.8 per cent on 2007.
The CAA said this was a trend that has been apparent for a number of years and was driven in part by greater competition with domestic rail services.
Passenger numbers on charter airlines have been declining in recent years, and the 2008 total of 29 million was 9.3 per cent down on 2007.
Scheduled airlines handled 1.6 million fewer passengers (0.8 per cent) during 2008.
Last year the number of take-offs and landings of commercial aircraft at UK airports fell 2.2 per cent to 2.3 million - the first decline since 2002.
CAA group economic regulation director Harry Bush said: "The fall in passenger numbers is to be expected in light of the worsening economic situation during 2008.
"The combination of business failures, such as those of XL Leisure Group and Zoom Airlines, together with a fluctuating oil price and the economic downturn has had a marked effect on the numbers of trips being taken."
He went on: "The early indications are that the larger falls seen in the last quarter of 2008 are continuing into the new year, with the prospect of declining traffic in 2009 overall, which, if it occurs, will be the first time since World War Two that UK passenger numbers have fallen for two consecutive years. Current economic trends make this outcome more likely than not."
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