Bank holiday boost for Heathrow: May airline traffic up 26% on last year
Bank holiday boost for Heathrow: Airport reveals traffic for May was 26% higher than last year’s figure
Start: Heathrow said air traffic was up 26% in May
Passenger numbers at Heathrow rose last month due to three bank holiday weekends.
The airport has revealed numbers up by a quarter, with demand for flights between the UK and the US particularly strong.
Bosses told investors yesterday that 6.7 million passengers used the airport in May as it took advantage of the extra holiday weekend for the king’s coronation.
Heathrow said traffic was 25.9 percent higher than in May last year. It said 1.6 million passengers flew across the Atlantic to North America, with the airport operating 248 daily flights to the US.
Flights to the US have increased as US airlines have switched routes to the UK and “away from the European and East Asian markets, which are recovering more slowly” following the impact of the pandemic.
Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye praised the performance of flights to the US as he shrugged off the impact of “eight days of strikes on the busiest days of May”.