11th Dec 2025 11:34
(Alliance News) - Heathrow on Thursday said it has hired Philip Jansen to be the next chair of Heathrow Airport Holdings Ltd, with the former chief executive of telecommunications provider BT Group PLC taking over from the start of January.
The announcement came as the west London airport pushes to be allowed to get started on building a third runway.
Heathrow also on Thursday reported a rise in passenger traffic last month for its busiest November on record. This was 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.
Heathrow said Jansen, who also is chair of advertising firm WPP PLC, will replace Paul Deighton as chair on January 1. Deighton will step down after nine years in post, during which time he helped guide the airport through the travel disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The airport on Thursday 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.
Pushing through this massive, politically contentious infrastructure project now falls to Jansen, working alongside Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye.
"Jansen's significant experience working with private investors as well as successfully leading a business within a highly regulated environment means that he is ideally placed to help prepare the airport for its next phase of modernisation and oversee the airport's future strategy," Heathrow said.
By Tom Waite, Alliance News editor
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