Airport operator BAA has announced that while passenger traffic in May was negatively impacted by the April eruption of a volcano in Iceland and British Airways' cabin crew strikes, cargo volumes actually increased on a year-on-year basis.
The group said that its UK airports recorded a jump of 33.7 per cent in cargo tonnage for May to 156,344 tonnes, despite the ongoing impact of the widespread European grounding of aircraft in the wake of the ash cloud that spread from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.
Heathrow Airport in particular enjoyed the month, handling an additional 36.1 per cent of cargo, while there were also big increases at Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland, where tonnage jumped 31.4 per cent and 30.2 per cent respectively.
BAA noted that passenger volumes for May had slipped 4.5 per cent on 2009 to 8.6m people, with a 4.8 decline in the number of air transport movements.
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