Morning Equity Briefing
Airlines & Other Transport
Airport traffic numbers show some recovery
Stephen Furlong
BAA's UK traffic grew 2.4% last month compared to February 2009, which was affected by severe weather. BAA's UK airports handled a total of 7.13m passengers in February, an increase of 2.4% on the same month last year. February 2009 saw passenger traffic affected by heavy snow across the UK. Heathrow traffic grew 5.3%, as it was largely free of snow in February 2010 and remains more resilient than other UK airports. The underlying figure — adjusted to take account of the weather problems last year — is 2.7%. Stansted's traffic declined by 4.5% compared to last February. The only market that was down was Ireland, down 4.2%.
The surge in air-freight tonnage at Frankfurt Airport (FRA) continued throughout February 2010. With 163,469 metric tons in the reporting month, FRA achieved year-on-year growth of 30.1% and handled noticeably more air-freight than in January. Thus, even the significant slump in tonnage in February 2009 was nearly offset. FRA served 3.3m passengers in February, slipping slightly by 1.0% year-on-year. The latter was more due to weather and a strike by pilots.