Year on year passenger growth at Inverness is currently running at almost 19% and from 1 April 2004 to the end of May 2004 the airport handled a total of almost 96,000 passengers. Passenger figures for June will be released shortly.

James Walton, Inverness Airport manager said: "Saturday saw 2,500 passengers fly in and out of the airport - our busiest day on record thanks to the scheduled and charter traffic. The airport continues to grow its traffic and last week's figures also showed a 30% overall increase in our London traffic on the Gatwick, Heathrow and Luton routes operated by BA CitiExpress, easyJet and bmi."

Alex Johnson, commercial and marketing manager at Highlands and Islands Airports Limited added: "Inverness continues to go from strength to strength thanks to the performance of our airline customers. We expect to see the positive impact of Eastern Airways' recent introduction of Sunday services to Manchester and Birmingham and the start of Thomson's first holiday charter programme when the June passenger figures are released.

"This growth demonstrates to other airlines that Inverness should be a destination that they look at seriously in terms of route development," said Mr Johnson.

Highlands and Islands Airports Limited manages and operates 10 airports in the North and West of Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Executive. The airports range from the principal hubs at Inverness, Kirkwall, Stornoway and Sumburgh to those at Barra, Benbecula, Campbeltown, Islay, Tiree and Wick.

In the year ending 31 March 2004 the 10 airports handled 934,000 passengers and more than 81,000 aircraft movements. Passenger numbers ranged from 5,600 at Tiree to 484,000 at Inverness.