General
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If you have any doubts about air travel returning to normal, take a look at Heathrow’s record-breaking performance in December 2023.
With 6. 6 million passengers, Heathrow considers this month to be the biggest December on record, surpassing pre-Covid years. It’s the only one: Stansted and Manchester Airport also recorded a record December with just over 2 million passengers each.
Heathrow figures recommend that 2024 will comfortably surpass the airport’s pre-Covid record of 80. 9 million passengers through 2019.
In fact, it will take 1. 7 million more passengers than in 2023 to break this record, an increase of just over 2%.
In 2023, 79. 2 million people passed through the airport, easily surpassing the forecast of 67. 2 million it had made at the end of 2022 when negotiating an increased fare with the CAA.
With a new CEO in charge (and the CAA having finalised its resolution on the fares Heathrow can charge passengers), business is picking up as usual. The airport will satisfy its new Saudi shareholder and expects 81. 4 million passengers this year.
At the end of the press release is a discrete list of 24 routes with 1 million or more passengers from Heathrow. Together, they contribute a third or more to Heathrow’s total passenger numbers.
These are based on where the initial flight lands and do not account for connecting itineraries, which is why Dubai and Doha rank so highly. Anyone flying from Heathrow to Singapore on Emirates is counted as travelling to Dubai.
In descending order of passenger volume (remember that everyone caters to over a million passengers at Heathrow each year):
New York is the predictable winner and appears to be on the list twice: once for JFK (in first place) and once for Newark.
The London-New York route is one of the most lucrative in the world. In 2018, the Heathrow-New York JFK route became the world’s first $1 billion route for a single airline: British Airways. Added to this are other airlines and airports. (Gatwick, Newark) and you’ll get a sense of how special dating is in the UK.
There are a few other interesting tidbits. For example, fewer passengers travel directly to Singapore than either Hong Kong or Toronto, which surprises me.
Obviously you can see the “Eurostar effect” when you compare Amsterdam and Paris, with Amsterdam thirteen places ahead.
Boston and Geneva are both new additions to this list, having broken a million passengers for the first time last year. London to Boston has seen a number of additional flights in the past year or so, with JetBlue launching a daily service and incumbent airlines such as United responding defensively. United cut its Boston flight in October, so we may see Boston slip off this list again in 2024.
Also surprised more passengers travel to HKG than SIN. Digging deeper I can see now that HKG both have 7 flights (5 CX, 2 BA) compared to (4 SQ, 2 BA, 1 QF) – i think.
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