Press & PR

Travellers are showing an increasing willingness to fly from smaller regional destinations to avoid queuing at major hubs, it has been suggested.

Annual Civil Aviation Authority passenger figures for the UK showed that regional airports are continuing to grow faster than London destinations, handling 42 per cent of passengers in 2006.

And this pattern has been borne out by the evidence on the ground, with a spokeswoman for Bournemouth Airport suggesting that this trend is due to concerns over queues.

"I think that … [bigger] airports are getting quite congested – Heathrow has certainly been very open and said that they're over their capacity, and people are choosing now local airports for ease to get there and in terms of ease of check-in and security," the spokeswoman said.

"Going through security can be a stressful part of your journey. By choosing to go for a regional airport, the average queuing time is like three to five minutes and not 55 minutes."

Increasingly, airlines are flying internationally from locations outside of London, with the likes of Manchester and East Midlands airports seeing substantial growth in recent years.

So with more options available for Britons travelling away from the UK, there is little to stop people heading off around the world.

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