BAA: Airport passenger numbers up 6%
Airports operator BAA today remained on track to handle 6% more passengers than a year ago even though traffic slowed in the run-up to Christmas.
The group, which includes Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted among its sites, catered for a record 110.6 million passengers in the nine months to New Year’s Eve.
This represented a 6.5% increase on a year ago and helped pre-tax profits to improve by 18.1% to £521m (€754m) as the aviation industry stepped up its recovery from the setbacks of Sars, the Iraq war and terrorism in previous years.
Although all its UK airports continued to experience growth in the final three months of 2004, BAA said the rise in passenger traffic was weaker than the previous two quarters at 4.3%.
Passengers were also spending more in airport shops despite tough market conditions, averaging £4.41 (€6.38) between October and December compared with £4.15 (€6) for the nine months as a whole.
Total retail income was up 7.5% at £457m (€661m) and chief executive Mike Clasper pointed to other recent achievements that underlined the “good progress” the company was making.
A pay settlement was reached with unions for the current year and the following 12 months, while construction of more than half of Terminal 5 at Heathrow had been completed on budget and ahead of schedule, he said.
The development at Terminal 5 has accounted for more than half of the £1.08bn (€1.6bn) spent by BAA on infrastructure during the financial year so far.
But its legal wrangle with budget airline Ryanair over airport charges has not been resolved yet and BAA has made a £14m (€20.3m) provision in its accounts.
Revenues from its airports rose 8.3% in the nine-month period to £1.53bn (€2.2bn), with nearly half generated by Heathrow where turnover rose 12.1% to £715m (€1bn).
The popularity of short-haul flights using no-frills airlines continued to spur growth at Stansted where underlying revenues rose 12.8%.
