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The recession has well and truly taken its toll on the airline sector, as revealed by new reports on passenger numbers by BAA. The results make for bleak reading for the industry, as the largest airport owner in the UK stated that the passenger numbers passing through all of its airports in May this year were 900,000 down on May 2008.

Overall, the drop across all of its airports was a significant 7.4%. However, the airport to fare the worst was Stansted, with passenger numbers down by a massive 18.5%. On top of that, for the first five months of the year the figure dropped by 15% compared to last year.

This has led Ryanair, one of the largest of the budget airlines, to call for the fast-tracked sale of the airport to sort the situation out sooner.

BAA has been forced by the Competition Commission to sell a number of its airports, including Gatwick and Stansted, in order to break up its monopoly in the UK. However, now Ryanair wants the sale of Stansted to be carried out as soon as possible as a result of its frustration over the dwindling passenger numbers.

A spokesman for Ryanair, Stephen McNamara, said that the quick sale of the airport would “tackle plummeting traffic”. But he also called on the government to “protect UK tourism and UK jobs”.

This was a reference to the government’s decision to add a £10 Airport Passenger Duty, also known as the tourist tax, which will come into force in November this year. Ryanair is worried this could exacerbate the problem, and is asking the government to scrap the tax for the sake of the industry.