Business travellers take to the skies again

BAA, Heathrow’s owner, is celebrating today after quarterly results showed an increase in business travellers jetting out from the UK to conduct overseas trade.
There was a 4.4% year-on-year increase in the number of passengers flying out of Heathrow between July and September, bringing the total to 19.5 million.
Colin Matthews, BAA chief executive, expressed his delight at the growth figures: “Parts of the globe are growing very fast. Business travel, happily, to these places is buoyant,” he said. He added a note of caution, however, saying that “no-one is predicting an easy time in 2011.”
Nevertheless, the recent quarterly results are an improvement on the 2.3% growth figure for the first two quarters, which excluded the impact of both the volcanic ash cloud and the industrial action surrounding BA.
It is likely that business travellers have been taking advantage of optimum conditions for exporting British goods. Until yesterday, when Standard and Poor’s revised its ratings outlook for the UK from ‘negative’ to ‘stable’, the exchange rates between pound and other major currencies had remained depressed. As recently as Monday, one British pound would buy only 1.12 Euros or 1.57 US dollars (rates as of today are 1.14 and 1.58 respectively). This did, however, provide a favourable climate for exporters, as overseas customers were able to buy British goods at a relatively low cost-per-unit.
It will be interesting to see whether the pound continues to strengthen and, if so, whether this has an impact on the number of business travellers boarding planes at UK airports.