More promising news from the UK's airline industry: The number of people travelling through BAA's UK airports increased by 0.3 percent to 10.9 million in July.
Heathrow recorded its busiest ever month, with 6.7 million people making journeys through the airport—3.5 percent more than last year. Sunday, July 18 was Heathrow's busiest-ever day, with 232,000 passengers.
Across BAA, the fastest growing market in July was Europe, with an increase of 2.9 percent combining both charter and scheduled flights. Long-haul traffic was up by 0.5 percent but domestic traffic was 4.6 percent lower than last year. The main source of passenger growth at Heathrow was the European market, where additional capacity fuelled an increase of 9.5 percent.
Not everything was so rosy in July, however: At Stansted, a near 8 percent drop in seats offered produced a similar drop of 7.2 percent in passengers, while in Scotland additional capacity helped to produce an overall increase of 6.6 percent in passengers travelling to and from Europe. At the individual airports, Aberdeen's traffic fell by 4.1 percent, Edinburgh grew by 0.6 percent and Glasgow recorded a drop of 3.6 percent. Southampton's July numbers were down 1.4 percent, while traffic at Naples increased by 6.1 percent in the month.
In total, the number of air transport movements at BAA's UK airports was 0.4 percent down on last year (Heathrow was up 2.9 percent).
