LONDON - The number of passengers churning through the airports in Scotland picked up last month after a setback in the preceding months following the July London bombings and the British Airways dispute, the latest statistics confirm.
Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen airports saw traffic of two million passengers last month, an increase of 5 percent over the previous months. "At all three airports, the picture is extremely positive, with international traffic growing substantially," said BAA Managing director Donal Dowds. At Aberdeen passenger traffic picked up by 10 percent to nearly 268,000 in September as compared to last year's traffic.
The overall rise this year has been a phenomenal 8.2 percent. The international routes of Bergen in Norway and the Danish city of Esbjerg had the most traffic in the month. Edinburgh airport saw a 6.9 percent increase in passenger traffic to 783,000 passengers last month. Nice and Copenhagen were the top international destinations from here. However Glasgow airport's annual growth fell 2.1 percent to 901,000 passengers in September. Orlando and Dubai were the hot international destinations.
A BAA spokesman confirmed that it would be investing £500 million for the expansion of all the three airports. "Clearly, our airports will need to expand to meet that demand and BAA Scotland will deliver the necessary investment, some £500 million over the next 10 years, to allow our airports to develop. Our aim is to build world-class airports serving a wider range of worldwide destinations," said Dowds. Ian Smith, the firm's director of operations said that the traffic was set to boom in October as the half-term approaches, "Glasgow is one of our most important and busiest bases year round but the half-term getaway is something else. This October is set to be our biggest ever."
Posted
on : Wed, 12 Oct 2005 10:40 GMT | General News
By : Paula Jenkins
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