11th Dec 2025 10:50
(Alliance News) - Heathrow on Thursday reported a rise in passenger traffic last month, making it the west London airport's busiest November on record.
This came despite continued weakness in trans-Atlantic travel to the US and Canada.
Heathrow reported 6.6 million terminal passengers for November, up 2.1% from a year before. In the first 11 months of 2025, the airport handled 77.3 million passengers, up 0.6% from the same period a year before.
Travel to North America was down 0.1% to 1.5 million last month. It was down by the same percentage to 20.6 million in the year to date. A bigger percentage decline, but from a smaller base, was travel to Latin America, which was down 11% to 176,000 in November and down 1.0% to 2.0 million in the year so far.
More than making up for these declines was travel to the EU, which remained the most popular travel destination from Heathrow by a wide margin. EU traffic was up 2.3% to 2.2 million passengers in November and up 0.9% to 28.4 million in the year to date.
The Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific also contributed, with passengers departing to or arriving from those destinations up 7.7%, 7.1% and 3.4%, respectively, in November and up 2.2%, 1.6% and 2.7% in the year to date.
Heathrow said six more routes crossed the 1 million passenger mark for 2025 in November. These were Mumbai, Lisbon, Abu Dhabi, Zurich, Singapore and Boston.
Cargo handled by Heathrow airport was down 0.9% to 142,390 metric tonnes in November but up 0.9% to 1.5 million tonnes in the year to date.
Heathrow said it is expecting its busiest ever December and Christmas Day.
The airport noted the UK government's support for its plans to build a third runway and called upon the Civil Aviation Authority to provide a decision on regulating the next phase of the project as soon as possible.
By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor
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