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The UK’s airports handled 7.4% fewer passengers last year than in 2008, the biggest annual decline since records began 65 years ago, figures have shown. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) said that with passenger numbers having also fallen in 2008, it was the first time levels have fallen two years in a row.

It said last year’s decline was led by a fall in holiday airline traffic, with charter flights down 17%. UK domestic flight traffic was down 8% and overall scheduled airline traffic fell 6%.

source: BBC News

Japan’s 98th airport has begun operations – offering just one flight a day. Ibaraki airport is located 80km (50 miles) and a long bus ride north of Tokyo.

The airport was conceived as a hub for budget carriers but the check-in counters were almost deserted as operations began. There is just one plane a day, to South Korea. Another flight, to the Japanese city of Kobe, will begin next month.

The airport has become a symbol of decades of public spending to prop up the economy that has left Japan studded with bridges to nowhere and unneeded dams.

source: BBC News

Sixty climate campaigners have held a picnic in the check-in hall at Leeds Bradford Airport in a protest over its planned expansion.

The airport wants to build a £28m two-storey extension to the terminal building which would house an improved check-in area and departure lounge.

The expansion is part of a wider £70m, five-year investment package for the airport.

Source: BBC

Luton Airport is to become the first UK airport to charge drivers for dropping passengers off at the terminal.Motorists will have to pay £1, which will allow them to spend just 10 minutes in the refurbished drop off zone.

The “kiss and drop” levy will be enforced by barriers which will take payment as the driver leaves. It is due to come into force later this month and comes within weeks of the same airport unveiling plans to allow passengers to jump the security queue for £3.

source: telegraph.co.uk

In one of the southern England’s greatest modern property rushes, more than 5,000 people signed up today to become joint owners of an acre of farmland on the line of the proposed third runway at Heathrow airport. They join Oscar winner Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and Conservative party green adviser Zac Goldsmith who bought the land from under the nose of Heathrow airport owners BAA last week to try to slow airport expansion plans.

source: guardian.co.uk 

Virgin Atlantic, the British airline owned by tycoon Richard Branson, said on Friday that it was in talks about forming a consortium that would bid for London’s second biggest airport, Gatwick.

Analysts have estimated that the sale of Gatwick could fetch up to three billion pounds (3.48 billion euros, 4.42 billion dollars).

Britain’s Spanish-owned airport operator BAA announced in September plans to sell London’s Gatwick hub after regulators called for the offloading of two of its airports on competition grounds.

source: AFP

More than 46 million airline seats will be cut over the next three months as the aviation industry is engulfed by the economic crisis.

The latest figures compiled by OAG (Official Airline Guide) show that demand for travel is shrinking throughout the world. Carriers plan to operate half a million fewer flights between October and December compared with the same period last year.

At least 45 European airports will lose all scheduled services by the end of this year, with 83,000 fewer flights offered by airlines within the European Union during this quarter than in 2007. Worldwide, more than 200 airports will cease offering services.

source: Telegraph.co.uk

Britain’s biggest budget airline hub received the go-ahead to handle 10 million more passengers but was warned by Ryanair and easyJet that it faces fewer flights if it hikes fees to pay for the expansion.

The government rubber-stamped a proposal to lift the passenger cap at the Essex airport from 25 million per year to 35 million, which allows around 120 more daily flights. However, Stansted’s biggest customers are withdrawing planes from the airport this winter in a row over landing fees and are threatening to pull more services if the expansion increases costs further.

source: Guardian.co.uk