UK. Heathrow Airport has recorded its busiest July in history, with passenger traffic reaching 8 million.
It also broke its previous weekly record in three consecutive weeks from 8-28 July, surpassing 1.8 million passengers each time.
The record-breaking achievement has helped the airport become the busiest in Europe for the January-July period, with 47.8 million passengers, outperforming Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, Madrid and Paris Charles de Gaulle airports by millions.
Last month’s passenger volume rose by +4.2% as Heathrow Airport marked its highest-ever outbound traffic during the week starting 22 July, when most schools in England closed for the summer holiday – more than 140,000 direct departing passengers were recorded daily.
The most popular destinations in July included Venice and Larnaca. Aside from Dubai and New York JFK airports, Hamad International and Dublin airports were among the latest routes with 1 million passengers travelling to and from Heathrow this year.
Orlando as well as other key US cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Dallas also recorded notable increases.
Despite the remarkable growth in passenger numbers, Heathrow Airport said it lost 90,000 transfer passengers as a result of the new Electronic Travel Authorisations (ETAs), a government scheme that makes all global visitors without legal residence in the UK pay a fee of £10 (US$13) to enter or transit.
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 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.” ✈
