11th Mar 2025 09:23
(Alliance News) - Heathrow Airport on Tuesday reported a small decline in terminal passengers last month, compared to a year before, despite a rise in passengers flying to the Americas and Asia, due to lower domestic and European travel and one fewer day in the month.
The west London airport said it handled 5.7 million passengers in February, down 1.5% on a year before. However, Heathrow noted that, adjusted for leap years - February 2024 had 29 days rather than 28 - it was the busiest February on record.
The EU remained by far the largest destination for travellers through Heathrow. However, at 1.8 million last month, this was down 4.5% from a year before. Travel to non-EU Europe was down 5.8% to 423,000 and domestically within the UK down 6.7% to 335,000.
Travel to Africa also was down, by 4.6% to 272,000.
However, traffic to Heathrow's second-largest destination, North America, was up 3.5% to 1.2 million. To Latin America, it was up 8.4% to 191,000.
Travel to Asia-Pacific was up 0.6% to 858,000 and to the Middle East up 0.3% to 687,000. Heathrow said flights to Delhi, Dubai, Mumbai and Riyadh consistently took off with the fewest empty seats of all destinations last month.
On a rolling 12-month basis, terminal passengers totalled 84.1 million, up 4.8% from the prior 12-month period.
Heathrow used the strong traffic figures to promote its expansion plans. Initial proposals for a privately funded expansion are being developed for the UK government to review this summer, it said.
"As the UK's gateway to growth, we must meet this increase in demand and do it without compromising our strategy to decarbonise and reduce noise impacts," said Heathrow Chief Executive Officer Thomas Woldbye.
By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor
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