UK airport data notes and FAQs

The Airport Authorities provide us with data that they receive from either Handling Agents or the Airlines themselves.

The passenger numbers include the total passengers on board the aircraft apart from working crew.

We collect data from mainland airports handling scheduled and major charter services. The European Commission's Regulation 1993 also dictates that data must be collected from airports handling certain levels of traffic.

We publish data in both monthly and annual tables.

We update the published tables every fortnight to include airport submissions that have been accepted most recently. Therefore, airport data can potentially be published within a 14 days from the end of a data month. Typically, not all airports will have been submitted within 14 days so we accompany the published table with a message showing which airport's data is not included. We will show the message “Complete” when the published tables contain data from all expected airports. All published data has been validated.

Aircraft Movement: Any aircraft take-off or landing at an airport. These could be either commercial or non-commercial flights. For airport traffic purposes one arrival and one departure are counted as two movements.

Air Transport Movements: Landings or take-offs of aircraft engaged on the transport of passengers, freight or mail on commercial terms. All scheduled movements, including those operated empty, loaded charter and air taxi movements are included.

We collect and publish overall totals of activity from approximately 60 airports, this includes the number of Aircraft Movements, Air Transport Movements, Passengers, Freight and Mail, International and Domestic Route passenger numbers. This information can be downloaded for free from our Data pages.

Within our airport database collection this is a movement by an aircraft of less than 15MTOM operating a non-scheduled service, these services are predominantly sole-use charter operations.

Airport table 19 provides a split of Air Transport Movement totals by fixed and rotary wing aircraft, however, for rotary wing only scheduled and oil-rig related charter movements are included. Helicopters, being below 15MTOM generally, are considered 'air taxi' (the oil-rig charter collection being an exception to the 'air taxi' rule)

You may wish to view a table within our UK Airline suite (www.caa.co.uk/airlinestatistics). Table 10, Public Air Transport Air Taxi Operations, provides details of hours flown and flights performed by all aircraft types operated by UK licensed operators.

We collect the number of flights handled by our reporting airports (Table 3 in monthly publications, 3.1 in the annual version), although there are many flights of this type operating to/from other airfields from whom data is not collected.

Our definition of Business Aviation movements - they are non-commercial movements operated on aircraft of 2730 kgs MTOM or greater conducting business operations (e.g. aircraft owned and operated by Multi-national companies)

We do not have a separate identifier for 'low cost' as they are recorded as 'scheduled'.

If requesting information for 'low cost' carriers please identify which airlines you require, as there are many different definitions and opinions within the industry as to 'low cost' identification.

Cargo is a sum of freight and mail carried. Freight table numbers are 13, 14, 15 and for mail the table numbers are 16, 17, 18.

Freight includes the weight of property carried on an aircraft including the weight of excess baggage and diplomatic bags, but excluding mail and passengers' and crews' permitted baggage. Freight in transit through the airport on the same aircraft is excluded.

Mail is the weight of Post Office mail carried.

We produce two tables in which you can find this information. For international routes, table 12.1, this includes passengers travelling worldwide on a flight either to/from a UK reporting airport. For domestic routes, table 12.2, which was introduced with effect from June 2001. Information is not available prior to this time.

Note: passengers travelling both from and to the UK would be counted as 2 passengers.

For more detail than provided in these tables (e g broken down by airline or with an arrival/departure split) please contact us.

Domestic traffic is counted both at the airport of arrival and at the airport of departure. The total domestic traffic is, therefore, only a measure of airport activity. The exception being in table 12.2 where duplication is eliminated so that actual passenger numbers are shown.

1. A terminal passenger is a passenger joining or leaving an aircraft at the reporting airport. A passenger travelling between two reporting airports is counted twice, once at each airport. A passenger who changes from one aircraft to another, carrying the same flight number (change of gauge) is treated as a terminal passenger, as is an interlining passenger.
2. A transit passenger is a passenger who arrives at and departs from a reporting airport on the same aircraft which is transiting the airport. Each transit passenger is counted once only and not both on arrival and on departure.