Almost eight million passengers travelled through Heathrow in July, seeing the UK hub retain “gold spot” on the podium as the busiest airport in Europe in the first half of 2024.
Before July this year, the airport had never surpassed 1.8 million passengers in a week. For three weeks in a row – from 8-28 July – Heathrow has surpassed this milestone, continuing to “break its own records”, it said.
Heathrow saw six of its busiest ever departure days in the week schools broke up for the summer holiday period from 22 July, with more than 140,000 direct departing passengers and almost 140,000 bags leaving the airport daily.
Heathrow stated close collaboration with its partners meant the airport performed well with no material impacts on flights from the recent global IT outage or illegal protest activity.
Thomas Woldbye, CEO of Heathrow, 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.”
Venice and Larnaca proved popular destinations as Doha and Dublin joined Dubai and New York JFK as the latest routes with one million passengers travelling to and from Heathrow this year.
Heathrow reported big boosts for Orlando and many other US destinations including Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Dallas.
Through July, the airport saw a year-on-year increase in cargo tonnage of 8 per cent – which it boasted was a “strong performance” that underscored its position as a “leading air cargo hub”.
But the latest data from Heathrow shows it lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes operating to and from the seven countries affected by the the introduction of the electronic travel authorisation (ETA) in 2023. The airport said the scheme “is devastating for our hub competitiveness”.
The UK government introduced ETAs in November 2023 for people entering or transiting through the UK without legal residence or a visa.
