EasyJet and Ryanair flying high

BRITISH AIRWAYS' disastrous August is seeing it drastically lose ground to the budget airlines, latest figures reveal.

Monthly traffic statistics show that easyJet carried 13% more passengers than BA through Britain and Europe during August. Ryanair's lead on the the flag carrier has been stretched to nearly 20%.

EasyJet, which had cheekily placed adverts telling air travellers left stranded by BA last month to get in touch, said passenger numbers in August rose 24% to 2.45m.

Over the same period BA, blaming a litany of 'staff shortages, bad weather, runway closures, technical problems with aircraft and baggage systems failures', reported an embarrassing near 3% dive in its short-haul passenger numbers in what is the busiest month of the year for Britain's airlines.

EasyJet, not without its own problems in recent months as it has been hit by the cut-throat competition of smaller budget airlines, said it had enjoyed a good month with its planes flying marginally fuller than last year at 88.6% against prevailing annual load factors of nearer 84%.

EasyJet's problems have seen it cut services to high-profile destinations like Amsterdam and Zurich, blaming the high charges levied by those airports, but it is replacing them with new routes into central and eastern Europe.

It said it would be flying 176 routes this winter season, 70 more than last year.

AIRPORT baggage handler and newspaper distribution group John Menzies said pre-tax profits for the first half of the year trebled to £15m.