London Heathrow suffered from a 3.5% drop in passenger numbers in April – the month following Terminal 5’s horror-show opening - according to figures released today by BAA.

Figures for the Spanish-owned operator’s other London airports were similarly poor – Stansted saw a drop of 2.4%, and Gatwick was worse, with 5.6% fewer passengers.

 
First quarter figures show Heathrow down 0.5% with nearly 21m passengers, which suggests the T5 havoc did create an impression on the travelling public, prompting a dramatic downturn.

BAA’s April figures for its UK airports show that the operator handled 11.8m passengers - a drop of 3% - and in its statement the company said the largest factor was ‘attributable to the fact that Easter fell in March.’ With the March and April figures combined it said the drop was reduced to 0.9%.

The statement continued: ‘A significant factor in the April result were nearly 500 flight cancellations, of which 350 were at Heathrow and most of the rest at Gatwick.’

Roughly half were due to snow at the beginning of the month it said, and the remainder by ‘operational difficulties in the first few days after the opening of Terminal 5.’

Yesterday the head of Heathrow quit BAA saying his role was about to “change substantially” under a shake-up by the new CEO Stephen Nelson.

And BAA is also currently facing the prospect of having to sell at least one of its airports – possibly more – with the decision in the hands of the Competition Commission which recently made it very clear in an ‘emerging thinking’ report that it considers common ownership of the major airports in the south east is adversely affecting competition between them.

It also noted that separate ownership would mean greater incentive to expand capacity.

A final decision on what should be done will come in August.