Aerospace

Heathrow smashes all-time records

Posted 12 August 2024

Almost eight million passengers travelled through Heathrow in July, retaining its position as 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.

Image courtesy Heathrow

Before July 2024, Heathrow had never surpassed 1.8 million passengers in a week. This has now been achieved three weeks in a row (8th – 28th July), as the airport continues to break its own records

Heathrow saw six of its busiest ever departure days in the week the schools broke up for the summer holiday period (from 22nd July), with over 140k direct departing passengers and almost 140k bags leaving the airport daily. Close collaboration with our partners meant that the airport has performed well with no material impacts on flights from the recent global IT outage or illegal protest activity

Venice and Larnaca proved popular destinations for those jetting off for some summer sun, as Doha and Dublin joined Dubai and JFK as the latest 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 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.

While Heathrow continues to attract new routes and record passenger numbers, the latest data following the introduction of the ETA 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. Heathrow sees this as a major detriment to its competitiveness and is urging Government to review the inclusion of airside transit passengers.

Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye said: “Team GB’s performance in Paris 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 eight 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.”