BAA Traffic Growth Slows

BAA Traffic Growth Slows: "Britain's biggest airport operator, BAA, said on Friday that a strike at British Airways and the impact of July's bombings in London cost it up to half a million passengers in August.
The company added that passenger numbers were bouncing back quickly following the bombings but the longer-term effects of the attacks were still unclear.
The number of passengers passing through London's Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted and BAA's four regional airports rose by 65,000, or 0.5 percent, to 14.275 million in August.
But the number would have been up to 500,000 higher if not for the bombings and the strike, BAA said.
'We think it was anything up to half a million passengers less for August,' BAA spokesman Duncan Bonfield said.
Numbers at Heathrow immediately dropped off 5 percent following the July 7 suicide bombings on London's transport system. They took several weeks to recover before aborted bombings on July 21 had a similar impact.
By early August -- one of its busiest months -- passenger numbers were level again.
'We think we are pretty much out of the bombings effect. The flying public gets more and more resilient, so recovery is quicker from shocks. The overall period of impact looks like it was only 4 or 5 weeks. That's a pretty remarkable recovery.'
He said the causes of the loss of passengers in August could be split roughly 50-50 between the bombings and the strike at BA, although many would return later in the year.
'We don't consider them 'lost'. Some passengers find other routes and a large percentage defer their flights. We think a significant number will come back in the next couple of months.'
Some 24,000 fewer passengers flew to and from North America -- a 1.3 percent drop -- largely due to the strike at BA which has a strong position in the trans-Atlantic market.
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