As another sign of the remarkable resilience and recovery of the aviation sector since the pandemic, London’s Heathrow Airport has been recording some impressive figures this summer. Almost 8 million passengers travelled through Heathrow in July, seeing the UK’s air hub become the busiest airport in Europe in the first half of the year – ahead of Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, Madrid and Paris Charles de Gaulle – by millions of passengers.
Before July 2024, Heathrow had never served more than 1.8 million passengers in a week. Heathrow has now been exceeded that figure for three weeks in a row (08 – 28 July), as the airport continues to break its own records.
Heathrow saw six of its busiest-ever departure days in the week that schools broke up for the summer holiday period (from 22nd July), with over 140,000 direct departing passengers and almost 140,000 bags leaving the airport every day. The airport reports that close collaboration with its partners means that the airport has performed well under the pressure of big passenger numbers, with no material impacts suffered by factors such as the recent global IT outage or illegal protest activity.
So where were all these people going? Venice and Larnaca proved popular destinations for those jetting off for some summer sun, as Doha and Dublin joined Dubai and JFK as the busiest routes, with one million passengers travelling to and from Heathrow this year. There were also big boosts for Orlando and many other US destinations such as Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Dallas.
Heathrow also experienced an 8% increase in cargo tonnage in July 2024 compared to July 2023. This strong performance underscores Heathrow’s position as the UK’s leading air cargo hub, boosting the UK economy, helping drive exports, tourism and investment across the country.
While Heathrow continues to attract new routes and record passenger numbers, the latest data following the introduction of the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) system shows that Heathrow has lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes operating to and from the seven countries included in the scheme, since its introduction in 2023. The airport says this is ‘devastating’ for hub competitiveness, and urges the UK Government to review the inclusion of airside transit passengers, as every little bit of extra competitiveness that Government can deliver for aviation will help deliver vital growth for the whole of the UK economy.
Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye said of the figures: “Team GB’s performance in Paris [at the Olympics] has been an inspiration to the nation and to Team Heathrow. In July, we were smashing a passenger record almost every single day and we’re chasing down our never-before-seen goal of serving 8 million passengers in a single month. I’m proud that although there were a few potential challenges which could have caused us to stumble, our team remained focused on the prize of making every journey better, and delivered a medal-winning start to the summer getaway.”
