The chaos at Heathrow’s newly opened Terminal 5 has had an impact on airports in Scotland, according to statistics. Poor weather has also been blamed for the statistics, which show the number of travellers passing through the country’s main three airports last month was 2.3% lower than last March at 1.58 million.
Airport operator BAA said that the statistics had rather predictably shown that domestic flights to London were the most affected, as traffic was down 7.45% on these routes.
BAA Scotland spokesperson Donald Morrison said that the baggage chaos and cancelled flights to and from Heathrow’s Terminal 5, combined with snow and high winds meant that the poor results were to be expected. He said: "With bad weather and baggage difficulties at Heathrow leading to a number of cancellations to and from Scotland, the drop in passenger numbers was not unexpected."
However, despite a notable decline in the overall amount of travellers from Scottish airports, international traffic at Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh actually increased by an encouraging 7.5% in the last month. The statistics also showed that Edinburgh was Scotland’s busiest airport last month with around 720,012 travellers, a 1% increase on March last year.
Donald Morrison said that overall these figures were very encouraging for Scottish airports. He said: "Overall passenger numbers continue to rise and international and long-haul traffic remains buoyant. Despite rising fuel prices, and the effects of the credit crunch, the market continues to grow, with dozens of new routes set to take off this year."
According to The Scotsman, Richard Havers, a former senior airline executive, was not quite so sure. He said that figures for April were unlikely to get much better, because Easter was now behind us and Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was still struggling. He said: "If last month's figures are as weak as they look, it is not looking terribly encouraging for this month." Mr Havers was also concerned about the 44 new routes that are to be launched from Scottish airports during the next year. He said: "The market is flat, which is worrying for this extra capacity. It's great to have these extra services, but they'll have to find passengers to fill them."
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.afreearticle.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites