2024 could be a record airport year

The CAA’s latest statistics show that the six London airports moved 168m passengers in 2023 versus 180m in 2019.

It is difficult to predict numbers for 2024 but the growth in air travel continues, London easily the world’s busiest airline city, way ahead of Shanghai, Paris and Dubai in that order.  

Heathrow Airport (LHR) gained its busiest-ever February in 2024 with 5.8m people flying through the hub.  The half-term school holiday saw more than 2m passengers pass through the airport. While winter ski destinations were popular, it was short breaks to winter sun destinations that saw the bulk of the traffic, with almost two-thirds of travellers heading to locations warmer than London. These latest figures confirm that the airport remains on track to handle more passengers in 2024 than any year in its history.  

Whilst we do not have the figures for March 2024 virtually every UK airport shows a growth from the previous year with Manchester and Stansted having their busiest Februarys on record – serving 1.9m passengers each, up 14% year-on-year.

East Midlands, a holiday airport part of the Manchester Airport Group, saw its monthly traffic increase by 33% year-on-year, with 183,000 passengers travelling through, which was equal to 85% of 2019 levels.

London City Airport does continue to struggle with the loss of business from Canary Wharf and the City of London.  A new CEO is bound to inject energy into the operation, now very much diverging into holiday traffic and winning platitudes from passengers from its ease of use.  In January 2019 it moved 341,022 passengers versus just 215,374 January 2024.

www.caa.co.uk

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