BAA’s airports handled 7.13m passengers in February, with Heathrow accounting for 4.6m of the total, up 5.3%.
Strongest growth, however, was achieved by Southampton, where traffic rose 5.9% year-on-year to 114.9k, while Edinburgh reported a 3.5% increase to 582.1k passengers.
Stansted (-4.5%), Aberdeen (-4.6%) and Glasgow (-5%) all saw declines, to 1.24m, 195k and 400.6k passengers respectively.
BAA said that February 2009 had been hit by heavy snow across the UK, and the underlying growth rate at the six airports, adjusted to take account of last year’s weather problems, was 2.7%.
Colin Matthews, chief executive, commented: ‘Heathrow remains resilient and other airports are beginning to see encouraging signs.
‘However, traffic remains depressed, reflecting tough conditions in the economy generally and in aviation specifically.’
For the first time in two years, domestic traffic across BAA saw growth, of 1.1% to 1.36m passengers.
European scheduled services recorded a 2.6% increase to 2.89m and North Atlantic traffic was up 2.7% at 881.5k passengers, despite several periods of heavy snow in the Mid-West and North Eastern parts of the US.
Other long-haul traffic rose by 4% to 1.58m passengers, with China (+6.8%), the Middle East (+11.1%) and South America (+17.6%) particularly strong.
European charter passengers increased by 9.5% to 99k, while Ireland traffic fell 4.2% to 324.2k.
Elsewhere, Gatwick handled 2.05m passengers last month.
The airport’s best performing market was European scheduled, where traffic grew by 10.5% year-on-year to 972.7k, followed by other long-haul (+7% at 405.4k) and UK/Channel Islands (+4.7% at 258.1k).
Ireland fell 10.3% to 92.7k, European charter 11.6% to 226k and North Atlantic 21.1% to 98.8k passengers.
See also:
European airline traffic Feb10 (10/03/2010)
US airline traffic Feb10 (09/03/2010)
European airline traffic Feb10 (04/03/2010)
Pension charge and Gatwick sale hit BAA (22/02/2010)
Airports hit by January snow (10/02/2010)