CAA publishes year end traffic figures for December

The UK CAA today published it's provisional traffic figures for the month of December 2008.

On DUB-LHR, a total of 129,847 passengers were carried on the route which is a 11% Year on Year (YoY) reduction for the month of December. End of year figures on the route show that 1.81m passengers flew the route, an 8% drop over 2007. In fact, February and March were the only months to record a YoY increase over 2007.

DUB-LGW is up 4.8% YoY for the month at 85,016. For the year, 1.08m passengers used the route which represents 22% YoY growth. DUB-STN is down 14.7% for December, YoY at 61,034. For the year, DUB-STN dropped 6% to a total of just over 924,000.

In Cork, the CRK-LHR route had it's second successive YoY decline for the month with passenger figures down 2.7% at 34,896. At year end the route outperformed 2007 by 10% with a total of almost 517,000 passengers.

CRK-LGW is as it has been all year - virtually unchanged over 2007. In December a total of 9,469 passengers used the route, up 3.3% YoY for the month. At year end the route showed a 4% drop in passenger numbers over 2007 at 114,533.

CRK-STN however was down 10.2% for the month YoY at 20,147. YTD the route is dropped 3% over 2007 at 297,343 passengers.

In Shannon, the LGW route has an extra service over last year which makes comparisons difficult. Traffic on the route performed marginally better than for the other months of the year with a higher multiple over last year's figures.

For December, a total of 15,564 passengers flew the route with a year end total of just over 196,000.

SNN-STN was 4.3% higher YoY for the month at 24,450 passengers. The year end figure for the route was 341,338, a 17% increase YoY, although Ryanair did add extra capacity to the route to compensate for the loss of the Aer Lingus Heathrow slots. Shannon was the only state airport to record growth on the STN route.

In Belfast, the BFS-LHR route carried 18,967 passengers against Shannon's figure of 21,278 for the same month last year. The Belfast figure represents a 44% load factor for the month based on number of days x number of flights per day x number of seats per aircraft. Using the same criteria, Aer Lingus load factor for the year on BFS-LHR was 49%. Total passengers carried on the BFS-LHR route for 2008 amounted to 238,754 compared to 333,248 carried on SNN-LHR in 2007. This represents an absolute loss of 94,494 in passenger numbers or a 28.3% drop. 

Belfast City - LHR passenger numbers dropped a massive 20% YoY in 2008 over 2007, a reduction of just over 104,000. Aer Lingus would appear to have taken passengers from BMI on the Heathrow route but the Belfast City reduction has to be seen in context of the fact that the route has averaged a 7% YoY drop in numbers every year for the past 5 years.