Number of passengers using British airports plummets

According to a recent report the number of passengers using British airports has plummeted for the first time in around seventeen years, suggesting that millions of people may be opting to avoid air travel at the moment because of the financial problems that they are experiencing due to the credit crunch and the recession.

The weak pound has also put many people off travelling overseas, because the low value of the pounds means that they now get far less holiday money to spend whilst abroad, with the value of the pounds against the dollar and the euro having plummeted.

British airports are said to have handled around 235 million passengers in 2008, which was a fall of nearly 2 percent compared to 2007. Between October and December there were around four million fewer passengers passing through British airports than during the same period one year earlier.

One industry official said: ‘My gut feeling is that the boom in low-cost travel has run its course – the budget airlines are not so low cost any more.’ Another said: ‘A decline like this is pretty striking. It is the inevitable consequence of airlines shrinking their flying programme. The growth of overseas property ownership has been a big growth driver in air passengers, but capital values of property abroad are also certainly on the slide. Sterling’s weakening is another factor because a lot of ex-pats rely on pension income paid in sterling.’