Number of passengers at British airports down in 2008

The number of travellers passing through airports in the United Kingdom dropped by 1.9% in 2008 compared to the year before. This was the first annual decline since 1991.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of the United Kingdom said in a statement that airports in Britain handled 235 million passengers in 2008.

In 2008, there were 2.3 million takeoffs and landings by commercial aircraft at airports in the United Kingdom, which was a 2.2% fall compared to the figure in 2007, and the first such drop since 2002.

Passenger numbers in November 2008 went down by 8.9% in comparison with the figure in November 2007, and the figure for December 2008 was down by 7.9% as against December 2007.

The decrease in both the number of air travellers and the number of takeoffs and landings was the worst in late 2008 as the global economic recession got worse, the Civil Aviation Authority, Britain’s aviation regulator, said.

Harry Bush, the Civil Aviation Authority’s director of economic regulation, said in the statement that decline was to be expected in the light of the worsening economic situation in 2008. “The combination of business failures,” Bush elaborated, “such as those of XL Leisure Group and Zoom Airlines, together with the fluctuating price of oil and the economic slump has had a marked effect on the numbers of trips being taken.”

Harry Bush went on to say “early indications” were that the sharp drops both in passenger numbers the number of takeoffs and landings at British airports persisted  in 2009 and that another annual decline was expected in 2009. If that happens, Bush said, it would be the first time since World War II that passenger numbers have plunged in two successive years.

The 1.9% decline in passenger numbers at airports in the United Kingdom in 2008 was only the fourth annual dwindling in passenger numbers since the end of the Second World War, the Civil Aviation Authority’s statement said.

The figures released by the CAA showed that airports in London – including Heathrow Airport, Gatwick Airport, Stansted Airport, Luton Airport and London City Airport – witnessed an overall slide of 2%.

According to the Civil Aviation Authority, London’s Stansted Airport was adversely affected in particular, with 1.4 million passengers less in 2008, which was a drop of 6.0% compared to the figure in 2007.

At Manchester Airport, currently the biggest regional airport in the United Kingdom terms of total passenger numbers, the number of travellers descended by 3.8%.

However, in terms of passenger numbers, the CAA said, some airports recorded an increase – London’s City Airport registered an increase by 12%, London’s Luton Airport by 2.6%, and Birmingham Airport by 4.8%.

The Civil Aviation Authority also showed that while charter airline numbers slipped by 9.3% in 2008 compared to 2007, the numbers for scheduled airlines went down by 0.8%. Also, there was a decrease in the overall number of passengers taking domestic flights in 2008 – declining by 4.8% to 25 million – which the CAA said was partly because of the growing number of people travelling by the train.