THE UK's major airports, including Southampton, handled almost 150 million passengers last year - a 1.6% increase on 2006, it was announced today.

A total of 149,953,800 passed through the seven airports run by the BAA company in 2007, with Heathrow handling 67.8 million which was 0.8% up on the previous year.

Of the seven airports, only Glasgow (1.1% down at 8.72 million) experienced a dip in passenger numbers last year compared with 2006.

Operations at Glasgow were briefly affected by last year's terror attack there although the airport was running normally again two days later.

Gatwick numbers in 2007 rose 3.2% to 35.16 million, while Stansted increased 0.3% to nearly 23.76 million.

Southampton Airport numbers last year increased 2.8% to 1.96 million, while Edinburgh rose 5.0% to nearly 9.04 million and Aberdeen was up 7.9% at 3.43 million.

The figures included the December 2007 total at the seven airports, which reached 10.9 million - a 0.7% increase on December 2006.

Despite fog at Heathrow, the total there last month reached 5.37 million - a 3.2% rise on the December 2006 figure for the west London airport, which suffered even worse fog at Christmas 2006.