More than 700,000 passengers flew via airports in the North of Scotland in the past nine months.

Figures for the third quarter of 2003/04 issued by HIAL today (22 January) show that 726,751 travellers used the company’s 10 airports in the nine months to end of December. This is an increase of more than 50,000 passengers on the previous year’s running total.

Overall passenger growth for the first nine months of 2003/04 is 7.5% compared to 2002/03 with seven out of the company’s 10 airports recording growth against last year’s performance.

Inverness and Stornoway continued to be the fastest developing airports in the region with respective passenger growth of 18.1% and 13.1%. Barra, Benbecula, Campbeltown, Islay and Kirkwall also recorded growth in passengers.

Wick and Tiree saw small drops in overall passengers for the nine months while Sumburgh’s figures continued to reflect the downturn in oil industry traffic.

Total aircraft movements, including scheduled, charter, executive, general aviation and military flights have also grown, up 7.1% to 62,999 for the nine months compared with an annual total for 2002/03 of 76,119.

Bob Macleod, Managing Director of HIAL, said: "This is good news for the region and reflects the growing number of routes and services that are available to travellers from our hub airports, particularly Inverness.

"Our growth forecasts are proving accurate and with two new routes starting from Inverness at the end of March, to London Heathrow and Stockholm, we are already on course to build on these figures in the new operating year."

ENDS