BUSINESS has been boosted at Newcastle Airport after the confidence of air passengers returned slowly following the September 11 atrocities.

The airport handled a total of 394,134 passengers last month, which represents just a one per cent decrease on July last year (397,685).

In comparison, in January of this year the airport saw a decrease of 13 per cent compared with January of last year. The negative percentage has gradually reduced over the past six months.

The number of passengers using domestic scheduled services grew and last month, Newcastle Airport handled 107,339 passengers on those routes, compared with 90,844 in July last year.

The increase is largely due to the successful Newcastle-Stansted Go route.

John Parkin, the airport's chief executive, said: "The latest passenger statistics once again confirm the steady, improving trend in recovery since the beginning of the year.

"The events of last autumn interrupted a very long-standing period of growth both at Newcastle Airport and within the aviation industry in general, in the same way as the Gulf War did a few years ago.

"Recent passenger figures at Newcastle illustrate the process of recovery, which will take at least a year to work its way through, but the trend of recovery is encouraging."

Last autumn passenger figures plunged 17 per cent at the airport, as fear of terrorism affected air travel worldwide.

Confidence in air travel has returned helped by cheap flight offers, rail problems and a poor summer in the North-East.

Hope for the recovery of the global air sector rose yesterday as figures showed the number of flights worldwide was almost back to pre-September 11 levels.

But it is thought it may be a year before the growth of up to 13 per cent seen in the months before last September is seen again.

* Airports operator BAA said said the popularity of no-frills airlines increased passenger numbers last month.

BAA, whose airports include Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, said cheap tickets had boosted demand for travel within the UK during July.

Domestic traffic was up ten per cent, with Stansted, Glasgow and Edinburgh in particular benefiting from the trend.

At Gatwick, passenger numbers were down 7.7 per cent on the previous year but BAA said that was the airport's second best result since September last year.

In total, 12.9m passengers passed through BAA's airports in July, up 0.4 per cent on last year and an improvement on the 11.6m recorded in June 2002.