Edinburgh Airport has recorded the busiest ever month for a Scottish airport for the second time as a total of 1,508,586 passengers passed through the airport in July 2019.

The figures are up 0.4% on the same month last year, but growth is down from 6.3% in July 2018.

Domestic passengers in July fell 4.7% on last year to 475,757 while international passengers rose 3% to 1,032,829.

Edinburgh Airport is owned by New York-based owner Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which has recently explored a sale for as much as £2 billion, according to reports.

GIP bought the airport from BAA for £807 million in 2012.

Potential buyers of Edinburgh Airport are said to include infrastructure funds such as Brookfield, Macquarie, APG and CKI and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

Edinburgh Airport CEO Gordon Dewar said: “It’s a bittersweet month for us – we’ve just recorded the busiest ever month for a Scottish airport for the second time, but it comes as we see a marked slowdown in growth.

“The fall in domestic travel has clearly had an impact and although there is growth internationally we cannot ignore the loss of routes over the past year, such as Norwegian pulling their transatlantic services.

“We previously warned that failure to cut the highest aviation tax in the world have an adverse effect on growth and this appears to be coming to fruition.

“Our industry hears the government’s concerns around the climate but the positive steps taken towards making aviation more sustainable have not been considered.

“Like all businesses, we are looking at how we make our operations more sustainable and how we can influence the wider industry to continue on that positive path.

“The airport campus employs around 7,000 people and as a business overall we support 23,000 jobs across Scotland – we have to find a way that delivers sustainable growth to ensure continued success for our economy.”