What You Need to Know about the Decline in Air Travel

strong>The number of air passengers travelling from the UK has continued to fall. All of the UK’s most popular and busy airports have reported further declines in passenger figures for the first 8 months of this year.

It is some of the most popular routes from the UK that are the most seriously affected with as much as a 16% fall in passengers travelling to Spain and a drop of one in ten travelling to the United States from London. Certain UK airports have been more badly affected by the downturn in air travel with Gatwick airport reporting a loss of 2 million passengers and traffic at Prestwick airport down by 25%.

Business travellers are down by 15% in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Guild of Travel Management Companies. Surveys show that passenger figures have consistently declined for four consecutive quarters.

It is thought that the decline has been fuelled by the fall in value of sterling along with the recession.There are many British holidaymakers who have chosen to spend their vacations closer to home this year rather than fly to Spain or America.

Some airlines are cutting back on services as a result of the decline in demand. Budget airline BMIBaby has announced that it will shrink in size by as much as one third during 2010 with cuts in routes from Cardiff, Birmigham and Manchester. Only last week British Airways announced that they would be reducing the number of cabin crew on flights from Heathrow from November the 16th due to the unprecedented losses suffered during the peak summer months.

It has been reported that we are through the worst of the recession and that there is now evidence of the green shoots of recovery. Unfortunately for airports and airlines it looks like there is a long way to go before passenger figures recover to their pre-recession levels.

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