Heathrow shrugs off August bank holiday flight chaos as passenger numbers surge
- 7.5m passengers used its services this August
- The figure is a 22% increase on the 6 million figure from August 2022
Heathrow shrugged off August bank holiday flight chaos as passenger numbers surged on the same time last year.
The UK’s biggest airport revealed that 7.5million passengers used its services in the month of August.
This is slightly lower than the 7.6million figure in July but a 25 per cent increase on the 6 million figure in August 2022.
The UK’s biggest airport revealed that 7.5 million passengers used its services in the month of August
In a statement, the airport, said: ‘Passenger satisfaction was higher than pre-pandemic, reflecting the investment the airport, airlines and their ground handlers have made in recruiting and training over 25,000 new colleagues in the last two years.
‘This extra resilience meant that while flights at Heathrow were impacted by the UK-wide air traffic restrictions in August, operations quickly returned to normal.
At the end of August, Britain was plunged into getaway chaos as many attempted to beat the rush of the bank holiday weekend.
The country endured its busiest day for flight departures in four years, hour-long queues at the Port of Dover and major delays on the M25.
Prior to the weekend, passengers flying from the South East to mainland Europe also suffered cancellation and delays, owing to poor weather and industrial action on the continent.
On the Monday, a collapse of the UK’s air traffic control system left many stranded and unable to return to Britain.
Heathrow added: ‘Security wait times averaged only 1.5 minutes in August. Passengers used the extra time in the airport to stock up on food as Pret A Manger sold nearly 1m sandwiches this summer. Others indulged in retail therapy to get ‘beach ready’, with a pair of sunglasses sold every two minutes.
‘Passengers and the UK’s supply chain have a growing list of destinations to choose from. With travel restrictions lifted, Heathrow now has more flights to more destinations in China than any other European hub. LATAM has confirmed the UK’s only direct service to Peru will take off from Heathrow on 1 December.’
Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: ‘I am very proud of the way colleagues across team Heathrow made sure that passengers had a super start to their summer holidays, with record levels of passenger satisfaction and average security queue times of less than two minutes – Heathrow is back to its best.’
Last week, Britain’s competition body conditionally backed the aviation regulator’s controversial rules over Heathrow Airport’s airline charging structure.
The Competition and Markets Authority said the Civil Aviation Authority was ‘not wrong in most’ of the decisions that were the subject of appeals by Heathrow and the airlines British Airways, Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic.
But the CMA sided with the airlines on ‘one small element’ relating to the potential impact of ‘exceptional events’ on passenger volumes and a ‘relatively minor aspect’ of the CAA’s cost of debt calculation.
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