London airports break traffic records in October

London Heathrow enjoyed its busiest ever October and London Stansted the busiest day in its history last month as traffic continues to rise in the UK.

A total of 7.2 million passengers flew through Heathrow, helped by the half term peak, ensuring that the UK hub experienced its busiest ever October and sixth consecutive month of handling more than seven million passengers.

The successive monthly upturns – another first in a record year of records – has led the airport to raise its annual forecast to 83.8 million passengers – an increase of 2.9 million on 2019’s previous annual record of 80.9 million.

The upturn over 2019 is the equivalent of welcoming 7,300 extra passengers every day, through the same four terminals and two runways.

Heathrow CEO, Thomas Woldbye, said: “This year has been all about breaking records at Heathrow. To keep up with growing demand and progress towards our vision of an extraordinary airport fit for the future we are investing more than £1 billion in 2024 alone.

“Being home to the world’s most connected airport is a huge boost for the UK economy thanks to Heathrow’s unrivalled links for passengers and cargo.

“To maintain that competitive edge, the government needs to recognise aviation’s vital role in enabling and supporting other sectors in its Industrial Strategy.”

London Stansted recorded the busiest day in its history when it welcomed more than 107,000 passengers on October 27.

The new daily record beat the previous high of 104,000 set on August 23, and is the fourth time the record has been broken in 2024.

Strong demand for family holidays and short breaks, particularly during half-term, also saw Stansted record its busiest ever October with 2.67 million passengers using the airport, an increase of 97,000 on the total for last year, the previous busiest October.

Airport managing director, Gareth Powell, said: “To record the busiest day in the history of London Stansted in late October is an incredible achievement and a powerful reflection of reliability, great choice, value and operational efficiency the airport and our airline partners are able to offer our passengers.

“We know all these aspects of travel are really important to passengers when choosing where they fly to and from, so our teams work hard every day to ensure we do all we can to make the airport experience as seamless and smooth as possible while offering the best connectivity to Europe of any UK airport.

“The month was not only a great success due to the record number of passengers we welcomed to London Stansted, we were also very proud to be named Airport of the Year at the prestigious UK National Transport Awards, and delighted to unveil further details of our very exciting and ambitious £1.1 billion investment plans for the airport

“The five-year investment programme will deliver wide-ranging benefits to passengers and help secure links to even more global destinations, helping transform the airport journey while maintaining the simple, efficient and reliable experience we know our passengers really value when they choose to fly from Stansted.”