July CAA stats
The 655,095 passengers this year is BRS's best ever July beating 2008 by 3,000.
2008 was the year that BRS saw the 6 mppa breached for the one and only time so far (6.228 for the whole year).
The other thing to remember is that BRS has seen passenger gains (slight to be sure) in 2010 and 2011 but with fewer rotations.
This is a trend of the past few years. In 2006 5.710 mppa was obtained with 66,000 atms whereas in 2011 5.768 mppa needed only 53,000 atms.
The pattern is continuing this year with, for example, July's 4.8% increase in passenger numbers obtained through 2.3% fewer atms. There will come a time though when atms will need to be increased if passenger numbers are to rise significantly.
This year April, May and June have also been very good coming second only to 2008 for those months.
Were it not for the greater disparity between summer and winter compared with 2008 this year might have seen the 6 mppa barrier breached again.
As things are it looks like somewhere between 5.8 and 5.9 mppa at the end of this year.
And yes Pete, easyJet is the main contributor followed by Ryanair. easyJet had eleven aircraft based from May this year compared with mid/end of July of recent years when the eleventh aircraft would arrive. Of the eleven based Airbuses there are three 320s based for peak summer. Last year there were two.