Heathrow Airport handled almost six million passengers in December 2022, according to a database posted on its website, almost twice as many during the same month in 2021.
Annual traffic for 2022 hit 61.6 million passengers, or 76% of 2019, during 2022. At 42.2 million higher than in 2021, the increase was the highest of any airport in Europe, according to a Heathrow statement published after the data were updated.
The airport, which earlier the same day was revealed to have been caught up in a late-December security alert relating to the detection of uranium in a package, said the busy Christmas period saw most passengers pass through security checks in 10 minutes or less.
The 5.94 million passengers made December the third-busiest month for the airport in 2022, behind only the summer holiday months of July and August when more than six million people passed through the hub.
Around 1.8 million of the December 2022 passenger load were heading to and from European Union member-states, with North America second with 1.4 million. Domestic passengers made up just under 325,000 of the total.
Passenger numbers showed a significant jump over the February - April period, up from 2.8 million to over five million as the UK and neighbouring countries dialled back pandemic-related restrictions.
Heathrow on January 11 warned against governments reintroducing curbs such as pre-flight coronavirus tests for passengers,
"We are concerned that the recovery of the aviation sector, which is critical to the economy, could be set back by the reintroduction of testing for travellers in the UK and elsewhere in response to increasing Covid levels in China, even though governments acknowledge there is no scientific basis for doing so," the airport said.
Airport statistics showed December cargo traffic falling to 109,151 metric tonnes from the almost-115,000 tonnes recorded the previous month. Year-on-year, cargo tonnage was down significantly, from the roughly 127,000 tonnes handled by the airport in December 2021.