BAA celebrates record Christmas

BRITAIN'S biggest airports operator, BAA reported a record rise in passenger traffic for December.

BAA's seven UK airports handled more than 10m passengers, an increase of 6.2% compared with the same period last year.

Annualised figures show BAA handled a record 131m, up 3.6%.

The big risers were Stansted - up 16.6% to 18.7m last year -and Southampton, where a new network of scheduled services sent numbers rising 54.2% to 1.22m.

Volumes at Heathrow remained fairly constant, rising just 0.3% to 63.2m, while Gatwick was up 1.3% to 29.9m.

Glasgow numbers last year rose 4.4% to 8.1m, while Edinburgh was up 8.2% to 7.48m. Aberdeen handled 2.52m passengers in 2003.

European charter traffic fell 3% in 2003 compared with 2002 and Eire passenger numbers were down 0.3%.

North Atlantic traffic - down 1.1% - also experienced a downturn, but European scheduled (up 7.6%), domestic traffic (up 6.2%) and long-haul apart from North America (up 0.6%) all recorded rises.