Gatwick has highest passenger rise in 2007
14.03.08
Gatwick enjoyed the biggest increase in passengers of any UK airport last year, according to a report by the the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The number of passengers using the airport increased by 1 million to 35.2 million, almost double the 513,000 added at Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport.
The number of travellers using UK airports increased by 2.4%, the slowest rise in the last decade. 241 million passengers passed through the terminals in 2007.
The main London airports - Heathrow, Gatwick Stansted, Luton and London City - combined handled 58% of all UK flights last year, down from 58.2% in 2006. The number of passengers travelling to the capital's airports rose by 2.8 million in the year, 2% more than in 2006.
The use of regional airports rose by 2.9%, with 101 million passengers in 2007, after rising by 4.0% in 2006. Manchester Airport experienced the biggest decline in travellers, wit the UK's fourth largest airport handling 21.9 million passengers last year, 232,039 fewer than in 2006.
However, more regional airports are developing a greater range of services and there are now 9 airports handling more than 5 million passengers each year, accounting for nearly one third of all UK passengers, while a further 9 airports each handle more than 1 million passengers annually.
Aircraft movements (landings and take-offs) also rose by 1.8% to 2.5 million. London City Airport saw the highest rate of growth in terms of movements 15.9% up. The docklands airport enjoyed its fourth consecutive year of double-digit percentage growth and is now handling over 2% of London passengers.
The largest increases were in passengers to and from Poland (up by 30.7%), Italy (up by 6%), and Spain (1.8%). The largest fall was Ireland (down by 0.1 million or 0.8%) after growth in 2006of 4.8%.
Europe was the continent that was most flown to from the UK in 2007 (139.0 million passengers, an increase of 3.1% on 2006). There were 22.4 million passengers on flights to and from North America, an increase from 21.7 million in 2006, and a reversal of the decline in passengers seen in 2006.
Outside of Europe and North America, the Middle East and Australasia were the regions seeing the largest growth in passenger numbers (0.6 million and 0.2 million respectively). Both of these represent increases of more than 10% since 2006. Between them, these two regions account for nearly a quarter of the passengers between the UK and the non-EU countries excluding North America.
25.3 million passengers were on domestic flights. This represents a fall of 1.9% on 2006, and is the only market segment where passenger numbers are not increasing.
121.3 million passengers at UK airports travelled on UK scheduled airlines. This was just over half of all the passengers at UK airports and slightly higher than the 2006 proportion - 50.4% compared to 50.1%. Of the remaining scheduled passengers, 57.7 million travelled on EU airlines, and 29.5 million on non-EU airlines.
Passenger numbers on charter airlines have been declining in recent years, and the 2007 total of 32.2 million represents a decrease of 4.6% on 2006.
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