So far this summer, London Heathrow Airport (LHR) has processed a record-breaking number of passengers.
With almost 8 million passengers travelling through Heathrow in July, the UK hub has retained its position as the busiest airport in Europe for the first half of the year. This places it ahead of Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, Madrid and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
What’s more, before July 2024, the airport had never surpassed 1.8 million passengers in a week. Now, this figure has been surpassed three weeks in a row from 8-28 July.
The airport’s six busiest-ever departure days were recorded in the week the schools broke up from 22 July. During this time, over 140,000 passengers and their bags directly departed the airport each day.
Popular destinations included Venice, Larnaca, Doha, Dublin, Dubai and JFK. The airport also saw an increase in the number of passengers travelling to US destinations such as Orlando, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Dallas.
Alongside an increase in passenger numbers, Heathrow experienced an 8% increase in cargo tonnage in July 2024 compared to July 2023.
However, since introducing the ETA requirement for transit passengers in 2023, Heathrow has lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes operating to and from the seven countries included in the scheme.
As this negatively impacts the hub’s competitiveness, it is urging the Government to review the inclusion of airside transit passengers.
