Traffic at Heathrow, however, fell by just 3.9% to 5.42m, ‘again demonstrating the resilience and importance of Britain’s international hub airport’, BAA said.
The biggest decline was at Stansted, where traffic was 18.5% lower than in May 2008 at 1.65m passengers.
Next worst was Aberdeen, down 14.1% at 255.5k, followed by Southampton (-12.5% at 163.9k), Glasgow (-11.7% at 649.6k) and Gatwick (-6.5% at 2.85m).
The only airport to see May traffic improve was Edinburgh, where it increased 1.4% year-on-year to 821.7k passengers. It was the second consecutive month of growth at the airport, which has been boosted recently by an increase in low-cost carrier services.
The best performing market across the seven airports last month was long-haul excluding the North Atlantic, with traffic falling just 1.8% to 1.86m passengers.
European scheduled dropped 5.2% to 5.21m, North Atlantic 9.1% to 1.57m, UK/Channel Islands 10% to 1.96m and Ireland 10.1% to 524.5k.
However, European charter once again saw the biggest decline, of 20.5% to 688.1k passengers.
See also:
Ryanair condemns BAA’s sale appeal (19/05/2009)
BAA sees difficult year ahead (05/05/2009)
BAA sees charter traffic fall by a third (15/04/2009)
Transfer passengers boost Heathrow (11/05/2009)