London Heathrow saw its terminal traffic rise by 18 per cent in October to reach nearly 7 million passengers – only 32,000 travellers lower than in October 2019.
The UK hub said this increase meant it was now the fourth busiest airport in the world with long-haul destinations such as Dubai, New York and Los Angeles being particularly popular destinations this year.
Heathrow has also been boosted by 11 new routes being introduced for this current winter season including the UK’s only non-stop connection to Peru, which will be operated by LATAM from next month. The airport currently serves 239 destinations in 89 countries.
Predictably the largest year-on-year increase (51 per cent) was to the Asia Pacific region, which was still heavily under Covid-19 travel restrictions a year ago.
There were also significant double-digit increases on domestic routes (up by 21.1 per cent), Africa (+20.6 per cent) and North America (+17.7 per cent) from Heathrow.
For the first 10 months of 2023, Heathrow’s passenger numbers rose by 32.4 per cent year-on-year to reach 66.3 million – this was only 2.4 per cent or 1.6 million passengers lower than during the same period in 2019.