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Business is booming at Heathrow Airport. The London hub handled 68m passengers in the year leading up to the end of May 2011. The statistics, released by the BAA earlier this month, represent the highest annual traffic figures ever recorded at the Hillingdon airport. The aviation giant says that the “late Easter holidays and the Royal Wedding” were responsible for at least part of the rise, which also boosted the popularity of the three Scottish airports owned by the BAA.

Whether the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be pleased to discover that their ‘special day’ resulted in an exodus from the country is debatable, but the event was nonetheless a boon for the aviation industry. Passenger numbers at Heathrow Airport were up 11.6% over the figures for May 2010. However, the BAA notes that ‘true’ growth for the month is likely to be in the region of just 5.2%, given that last year’s statistics were impacted by the volcanic ash crisis.

BAA chief, Colin Matthews, noted that demand for flights was “particularly strong” on long-haul routes from Heathrow Airport.

May 2011 was the third consecutive month of growth at Heathrow, following on from bourgeoning traffic in March and April. Edinburgh Airport enjoyed a similar run of good luck, posting buoyant figures for March, April, and May, and increasing monthly passenger numbers by 13.7% over May 2010. Aberdeen and Glasgow airports saw traffic levels for the fifth month increase by 11.8% and 7.0%, respectively.

The other two airports on the BAA’s spreadsheet, Stansted and Southampton, were not as fortunate. While Stansted enjoyed its first month of consecutive growth in more than three years, the Essex hub lost 4.0% of its passengers between May 2010 and the same month this year. Southampton was equally unlucky, despite a PR campaign to lure passengers to the hub from London, posting a loss of 1.1% for the month of May, and a 7.7% reduction in flyers for the year as a whole.