BAA, which owns Heathrow, London Stansted and London Gatwick is reporting an almost 13 per cent increase in revenue in the first two quarters of 2009, compared to the first two quarters of 2008. This puts revenues up to 1.15 billion pounds. This is a particularly interesting result, because the amount of passengers passing through the airport is down by 7.4 per cent.

One of the main factors was BAA’s retail business. The amount of retail business per passenger has gone up by 7.3 percent to almost five pounds on average. At Heathrow Airport the average amount of retail expenditure per passenger went up by 11.1 per cent pushing past the five pound per passenger level. The company said that they had benefitted by a weaker pound, they also went on to say “in-terminal shopping, reflecting increased passenger numbers benefiting from terminal five’s high-quality retail facilities, and a higher proportion of intra-terminal transfer passengers, providing longer departure lounge dwell times for such passengers”.

In 2013, BAA is planning new improvements, renovations and two new terminals that will cost just short of 5 billion pounds, so current trends upward in their revenues are extremely welcome.