BAA has confirmed that a strike at British Airways and the impact of July's London bombings cost it up to half a million passengers in August. The number of passengers passing through London's Heathrow, Gatwick

and Stansted and BAA's four regional airports rose by 65,000, or 0.5%, to 14.2m in August. But that number would have been up to 0.5m higher if not for the bombings and the strike, BAA said. As expected, some 24,000 fewer passengers flew to and from North America, down 1.3%.