Passenger numbers at Heathrow airport climbed to 7.7 million in July, up 21.4% from last year, as Brits sought to escape the bad weather back home.
While the growth was strong, the numbers are still below pre-pandemic levels.
Traffic to Turkey was at record highs of more than 73,000 passengers, while there were near-record numbers of passengers going to Portugal, Gibraltar and Italy.
Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “It's great to see so many passengers getting away to grab some summer sun. We've got a great range of popular destinations and our teams are delivering excellent service which will ensure your travels get off to the best start.”
After Heathrow had been hit hard by strikes and cancellations during Easter and May’s bank holidays, it boasted that service has been much better over the summer holiday period.
“It has been a strong start to the summer season for passenger service,” it said. “With security queues consistently under five minutes, passengers can travel stress-free and enjoy more than 300 retail and food and beverage options at Heathrow.”
New York remains the most popular destination.
The EU remained the most popular group of destinations, though passenger growth was slower at 15.6% to 2.6 million. North America was next with 2.0 million passengers.
The fastest growth was again for flights to the Asia/Pacific region, which had much stricter pandemic travel restrictions in place for much of 2022. The number of passengers rose by 72.9% to 951,000.
Holland-Kaye will leave later this year, but the date hasn’t been announced yet.
