Heathrow’s record-breaking year ends with busiest December ever

Image courtesy Heathrow

On what is normally one of the quietest days for travel, Christmas Day also saw a record 160k passengers, a 13% increase on the previous record from 2023.
    
During the season of gift-giving almost 138,000 tonnes of cargo flew through Heathrow, culminating in a total of over 1.5 million tonnes in 2024. This represents more than a 10% growth compared with 2023, with traders and forwarders taking advantage of the airport’s growing long-haul network to fly their high value and time critical goods around the world.

In line with record-breaking traffic growth in 2024, Heathrow has continued to provide strong service, with 92% of passengers through security in less than five minutes. It has also continued to deliver significant operational benefits, investing millions to upgrade security lanes and resurface the southern runway, with no impact to operations despite it being the busiest ever summer.

New York, LA, Dublin and Madrid were among the top destinations in 2024 for Heathrow passengers, as the airport maintained the status of most connected airport in the world.

Heathrow’s CEO Thomas Woldbye said: “Twenty twenty-four was an exciting and a record-breaking year at Heathrow – I’m proud of all my colleagues and our partners who worked so hard to deliver great experiences for more passengers than ever before. In 2025, our journey towards better value for our customers will continue by investing in the kind of facilities our passengers and airlines are looking for. We aim to become more innovative to ensure that our airport delivers for the whole of the UK."

With cold and grey Mondays encouraging holiday bookings, 2025 is off to a strong start and Heathrow forecasts 84.2 million passengers over the full year. To continue to deliver for passengers who depend on the world class hub and create business opportunities up and down the country, the airport will be investing over £1 billion again this year to make the airport fit for the future.