BAA Airport Traffic drops 4.2% in 2009

BAA has reported that Passenger traffic at its major airports dropped by 4.2% in 2009, in what has been described as a difficult year by the airport operator, although an improvement has been seen towards the last quarter.

At Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, passenger numbers fell by 1.5%, to 65.9 million. Glasgow airport recorded 7.2 million passengers in 2009, a 11.3% drop in passenger traffic.

In all, BAA's six airports saw 106.9 million passengers come through its terminals in 2009. That number doesn't include passengers passing using Gatwick airport, which was recently sold to a U.S.-based private investment fund, the operator said.

"2009 was a difficult year for our airline customers," BAA chief executive Colin Matthews said in a statement. "Towards the end of the year we saw signs of improvements, particularly at Heathrow, but there are more challenging times ahead in 2010."

BAA stated the drop in traffic slowed 1.2% in the last quarter, but extremely bad weather in the U.K. and the rest of Europe in December led to many disruptions and had made an impact. BAA said the bad weather had cost them 150,000 lost passengers in cancellations and passengers deciding not to travel.