The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) published the first edition of its new quarterly statistics publication, Aviation Trends. Principally intended to provide top-line facts and figures in a simple format, it covers key UK trends in the number of flights and passengers, and volume of cargo, supplementing the more detailed information contained in the CAA’s monthly statistical publications.

Today’s publication covers Quarter 1 2008 and confirms that during the first three months of 2008, compared with the same period in 2007:

• The number of passengers embarking and disembarking aircraft at UK airports grew 2 per cent. The equivalent figures for scheduled and chartered flights were 3 per cent and -1 per cent respectively.

• The number of passenger flights to and from regional airports decreased by 3 per cent while the number of passengers increased by 3 per cent, indicating that aircraft with higher seat numbers were flown, or load factors had increased. At the London airports, passenger numbers and flights increased by 2 per cent and 1 per cent respectively.

• Air freighters, those aircraft which carry only freight and mail, increased their flight utilisation at London but not regional airports. The weight of cargo loaded and unloaded onto air freighters at regional airports increased 4 per cent, although the number of flights rose by 11 per cent.  At the London airports, air freighter flights increased by 1 per cent, and cargo weight increased by 9 per cent.

In addition to regular sections summarising key data from the CAA’s Airport Statistics, the section Did you know? will regularly present different data derived from the CAA’s various sources. In today’s edition, UK-US passenger traffic data for 1925 to 1938 from the CAA archives is shown.