Report by John Lavabre
BAA has benefited from the rail crisis and reported a rise
in profits and passenger numbers throughout its UK operations.
BAA, which owns Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Southampton,
Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen airports, has seen pre-tax profits, including exceptional
payments, rise by 50.2% to £467 million in the nine months to December 31. Earnings
per share, before exceptional payments, were 31.6 pence.
Passenger numbers increased by 6.5% to 98.4 million. This
compares to 92.4 million passengers in the nine months to December 31 1999.
BAA chief executive Mike Hodgkinson said: “We benefited from
unusually robust growth in passenger traffic reflecting both the rail industry
disruption in the UK and the reversal of last year’s Millennium effect (when
people did not travel due to fears over the Millennium Bug).
“We continue to focus on developing our core airports
business with a positive outlook for 2001.”