A series of factors like slowing economy, capacity cuts, rising fares and a serious credit crunch have been accounting for a significant drop in the number of passengers at several UK airports. Notably, BAA, the operator of seven airports across the UK including Gatwick and Stansted have seen the fall of passenger numbers by 1.7% during July when compared to the figures recorded during last year. Most remarkably, last year around 14.8m passengers passed through the hubs.

Above all, Stansted Airport witnessed the biggest drop in the number of passengers among all the airports operated by BAA, with 5.3% fewer people using the airport when compared to the figures noted last year. All the three BAA airports at Scotland have also seen a notable reduction with the rate of reduction recorded as 3.2% at Glasgow, 1.3% at Edinburgh and 2.6% at Aberdeen.

Possibly as a result of the Open Skies Agreement, Heathrow was virtually unchanged when compared to last year. In fact, the airport has remarkably shown a significant increase of about 6.5% on long haul routes. However, the loss of Gatwick from the same source is said to be on account of the shift of long-haul traffic to Heathrow that has contributed to an overall drop of 1.8% despite an increase of 11.9% in the European Scheduled Traffic. In fact, the Southampton airport witnessed a drop of passengers by about 1.8%. Among the key markets affected the most by the slowdown noted during last month were the European Flights that saw a 1.4% drop and UK domestic, that saw a 4.5 percent drop.