October CAA stats:
Terminal passengers: 11,810 (compared to 10,610 last month, 2,007 passengers in October 2020 and 12,967 in October 2019)- Aberdeen: 1,547 (up 83% v Oct last year & down 1% v Oct 2019)
- Belfast City: 685 (up 210% v last yr)
- Bristol: 342
- Heathrow: 1,448 (up 501% v last year & best month yet)
- Newquay: 230 (up 46% v last year)
- Alicante: 2,456 (1,668 in September)
- Amsterdam: 715 (down 30% v last year & down 95% v 2019)
- Corfu: 676 (797 in September)
- Faro: 1,760 (991 in September)
- Palma: 1,888 (995 in September)
- Plus 63 on (football?) charters to/from Cardiff
There were also 400 transfer passengers not included in the above figures, presumably mainly Loganair passengers transiting between Bristol and Aberdeen.
Aberdeen is still growing year on year but is continuing to drop compared to recent months (following Eastern's withdrawal and the subsequent price increases) which shows the price sensitivity on this business heavy route but October's figure is still comparable to pre-pandemic levels. Belfast and Newquay follow the trend of up on last year but down on summer 2021, illustrating the more seasonal bias of these routes. Heathrow loads are creeping up (12.5 in October compared to 11/5 in September and 9.9 in August) but there is clearly much more room for improvement.
Half term gave some of the holiday routes a big boost with Alicante, Palma and Faro all having their best month since Ryanair returned to the airport. Corfu was down on September (but up on August) possibly due to it not being such an in-demand location in October. KLM ran only 20 flights to Amsterdam with an average of 35.8 passengers compared to 168 flights and 66.6 passengers in October 2019.
My take is that holiday & leisure traffic is pretty strong with drops at Newquay and Belfast more down to seasonality. However business demand is clearly weak right now and this is impacting Amsterdam, Heathrow and (to a lesser extent) Aberdeen.