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A record number of passengers passed through London’s Heathrow airport during the peak summer months, leaving the airport operating close to capacity as it considers a new tilt at expansion.
The airport on Wednesday reported booming demand for travel to the US and European summer holiday destinations including Spain, Greece, Italy and Turkey, as it said 7.97mn people had flown to or from its terminals in August, a fourth consecutive month of record passenger numbers.
Heathrow also had its busiest-ever day of travel on Sunday August 18, when 269,000 passengers flew.
Chief executive Thomas Woldbye said the airport had maintained “strong service levels” despite the high passenger volumes.
“For the past four months we have broken several new records, demonstrating our ability to open a world of opportunity for more people, cargo, business and the UK economy,” he said.
Still, Heathrow has warned that its position as Europe’s leading hub airport is threatened by UK government plans to require all passengers flying into the UK to apply for a £10 electronic travel permit, including those transferring without entering the country.
The airport said it had lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes operating to and from seven Middle Eastern countries included in the scheme since its introduction in 2023. The scheme will be rolled out to all visitors who do not require a formal visa from next year, including those from the EU and US.
Manchester airport and London Stansted also said on Wednesday that August had been their busiest-ever months in a sign of how demand for travel during peak periods is still strong, even if several airlines have said passengers appear unwilling to stomach further rises in air fares.
Heathrow bosses are working on a new plan to expand the airport but are prioritising comparatively minor infrastructure improvements to incrementally increase its capacity before deciding on whether to push ahead with long-standing and controversial plans for a third runway.
The airport is limited to 480,000 flights a year, but improving infrastructure from parking and road access to baggage systems would allow more passengers to fly without breaching the cap.
Airlines could also use larger planes or cram more passengers on to their current flights, which are on average 20 per cent empty when flying into Heathrow.
But in the long term, the only way for a step change in capacity would be to reignite controversial and decades-old plans to expand beyond the airport’s perimeter and build a new runway.
The airport set out plans in 2019 for a £14bn megaproject, including demolishing local houses and moving the M25 motorway into a tunnel to build a new airstrip to the north-west of the current airfield. It aimed to build flight capacity to eventually raise passenger numbers to 142mn a year, but paused planning for the project more than four years ago during the pandemic.
The new Labour government signalled in July that it was “open-minded” about airport expansion so long as it met various tests — including on climate.
The following month the government gave permission for London City Airport to expand its passenger numbers by more than a third, although it blocked requests for additional flights on Saturdays.
