Air Passenger Figures Continue to Fall
The number of people taking to the skies from the UK is continuing to decline. All of the UK’s most popular and busy airports have reported further declines in passenger figures for the first 8 months of this year.
Many of the most popular destinations from the UK are the worst affected with a fall of 1 in 10 passengers to the United States and a drop of 1 in 6 passengers travelling from London to New York. Certain UK airports have been more badly affected by the downturn in air travel with Gatwick airport reporting a loss of 2 million passengers and traffic at Prestwick airport down by 25%.
There has been a fall of aroung 15% in business travellers during the first quarter of 2009 according to the Guild of Travel Management Companies. This is the fourth consecutive quarter in which surveys have shown a consistent decline in passengers.
The continued decrease in demand for air transport is generally thought to be due to the recession along with the falling value of sterling against other currencies.There are many British holidaymakers who have chosen to spend their vacations closer to home this year rather than fly to Spain or America.
There are some airlines making cutbacks due to this persistent decline in demand. Budget airline BMIBaby has announced that it will shrink in size by as much as one third during 2010 with cuts in routes from Cardiff, Birmigham and Manchester. And last week British Airways announced that they had suffered unprecedented summer losses and these will result in a reduction in the number of flight attendants on each flight from Heathrow from November 16th.
While there have been reports that some are seeing what are described as the green shoots of recovery suggesting that the recession is coming to an end. Unfortunately for airports and airlines it looks like there is a long way to go before passenger figures recover to their pre-recession levels.
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