number of airlines and pax numbers
quote:-
"I was thinking that Summer 15 was shaping up to be an interesting summer with around 13 operators - I hadn't realized the variety on view in 1979/80!"
In spite of 24 airlines with regular flights summer 1979, many of the foreign carriers were only operating 1 flight a week, and the total passenger numbers were only around 2.8 million (can't find the book that would tell me exactly). 1981 saw most of the Scandinavian flights return to STN, coinciding with Monarch reducing their based fleet to just 3 aircraft after opening bases in LGW/MAN and GLA with consequent redeployment of some of the LTN fleet. Annual passenger figures dropped to around 1.6 million in the early 1980's as a result. They did begin to recover with the arrival of a certain Irish airline in 1986.