Heathrow sees record passenger figures for July

Heathrow Airport was the busiest in Europe during the first half of year with 47.8 million passengers travelling through its five terminals. Before July, Heathrow had never surpassed 1.8 million passengers in a week. This has now been achieved three weeks in a row from July 8 to July 28 with the airport repeatedly breaking its own record. In addition, the airport saw six of its busiest ever departure days in the week beginning July 22, 2024, with over 140,000 direct departing passengers and almost 14,000 bags leaving the airport daily. The airport experienced an 8% increase in cargo tonnage during July when compared to the same month last year. ""In July, we were smashing a passenger record almost every single day and we’re chasing down our never-before-seen goal of serving 8 million passengers in a single month,"" said Thomas Woldbye, Heathrow CEO. ""I’m proud that although there were a few potential challenges which could have caused us to stumble, our team remained focused on the prize of making every journey better and delivered a medal-winning start to the summer getaway."" However, following the introduction of the electronic travel authorisation (ETA), which gives permission to travel to the UK, figures show that the airport has lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes operating to and from the seven countries included in the scheme such as Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.