Ouch, it seems that credit crunch is beginning to bite at BA’s UK airports.

Figures just released show that overall the airports handled a total of 13.3 million passengers in September – a decrease of 5% when compared with September 2007.

The largest drop in passenger traffic was at Glasgow Airport where passenger numbers fell by 11% compared with September 2007. This huge reduction was largely down to the collapse of XL and Zoom. BAA’s other Scottish airports both reported a fall in numbers: Aberdeen Airport down 4.2% and Edinburgh Airport down 2.9%.

Of BAA’s English airports, Stansted saw passenger numbers drop by 4.7%, Southampton airport down 4% and Heathrow airport saw a decrease of 3.6%. Gatwick airport reported an overall drop of 6.8% resulting from a 44% decrease in  North Atlantic traffic and an increase of 8.8% in European scheduled traffic – attributed to the introduction of the ‘Open Skies’ agreement.