UK airports perform much worse than their European competitors due to UK government travel restrictions, study finds.
Analysis of the data by Ralph Anker for Air Service One is titled: “Once Europe’s busiest airport, London Heathrow is only expected to rank 17th in May for passengers.
As other European airports step up operations, Heathrow has slipped into the league. It was the sixth in December, January 12, February 13 and March, and April 14.
It is now overtaken by Barcelona, Palma and Paris’ second airport, Orly.
But the author says: “If Heathrow’s decline in its European ranking is alarming, think about most other airports in the UK.
“While Heathrow retained almost 8% of its traffic in 2019, most UK airports performed significantly lower.”
Most of the country’s major airports reported low single-digit percentages for April 2021 compared to their activity two years ago.
Stansted and Manchester, both owned by Manchester Airports Group, recorded “retention percentages” of just over three percent, while Birmingham and Edinburgh were just under three percent.
Bristol was just under two percent.
Gatwick, once the world’s busiest single-runway airport, only handled 1.3% of passengers. It was previously in the top 10 of European airports, but has now slipped to 106th.
Four airports were doing even worse: Leeds Bradford and Cardiff were both at 0.3% in April, while East Midlands handled a thousand passengers in 2019. Southend Airport saw no passengers at all during the entire period. month.
The study emerged as the CEO of Eurocontrol reported “growth in almost the entire Eurocontrol network”.
Eamonn Brennan tweeted: “France + 20%, Italy + 17% & Greece + 32%. However, the UK was down 3%.
A government spokesperson said: “We recognize the difficult times facing all transport sectors as a result of Covid-19, which is why we have put in place a leading support program, comprising around 7 billion pounds of support for air travel. sector, as well as plans to raise capital, flexibilities with tax bills and the extended leave scheme. “
Currently, overseas vacations from the UK without return quarantine are only possible in Gibraltar and Iceland.
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Source: www.independent.co.uk
This notice was published: 2021-06-22 09:26:23
