Edinburgh Airport chief bullish despite traffic drop

Snow and closures in other cities have been blamed for a drop in passenger numbers at Edinburgh Airport.

Bosses at the terminal said 525,637 passengers passed through in January, down 5.7 per cent from the same period in 2012, when 557,373 passengers used the airport.

It said that domestic passengers dipped by 5.9 per cent from 312,522 to 293,979 while international passengers were down 5.4 per cent from 244,851 to 231,658.

Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar said: “Despite winter weather affecting other parts of the UK, Edinburgh 
Airport remained open.

“Our snow teams did a remarkable job but still we were affected by other closures and passenger numbers are therefore down. That is clearly disappointing.

“Looking forward, the outlook for Edinburgh 
Airport is good. We expect our traffic to grow as we move to the busy summer months and we start to see the full positive impact of our new deals with EasyJet and Ryanair, and new routes across Europe, North America and the UK.”

Glasgow Airport also reported a dip in passenger numbers last month, with almost 412,000 people travelling through – 1.2 per cent less than the same period last year.