Heathrow records busiest-ever month

Britain's biggest airport, Heathrow, had its busiest-ever month in July 2010, it was announced today.

The west London airport handled 6.7 million passengers last month - 3.5% up on the July 2009 total, airport operator BAA said.

The month included Heathrow's busiest-ever day - Sunday July 18 - when 232,000 passengers passed through the airport.

Driving the growth at Heathrow last month was the European market which increased 9.5%.

The rise in numbers at Heathrow compensated for a dip in passenger levels last month at four of the five other UK airports run by BAA.

Numbers at Stansted fell 7.2% to 2.02 million, while Southampton fell 1.4% to just under 188,000, Glasgow was down 3.6% to just under 789,000 and Aberdeen decreased 4.1% to just under 277,000.

Numbers at Edinburgh last month were up 0.6% to just over 961,000.

The six airports handled nearly 58.5 million passengers in the first seven months of this year - a 4.5% drop on the January-July 2009 total.