Take-off: Heathrow said airline traffic figures up 26% for May
Heathrow passenger numbers were boosted last month by three bank holiday weekends.
The airport has revealed numbers jumped by a quarter with particularly strong demand for flights between the UK and US.
Bosses told investors yesterday that 6.7m passengers used the airport in May, as it benefited from the extra bank holiday weekend for the King’s coronation.
Heathrow said traffic was 25.9 per cent higher than in May last year. It said 1.6m passengers flew across the Atlantic to North America, with the airport running 248 daily flights to the US.
Flight numbers to the US have grown as American airlines have switched routes towards the UK and ‘away from European and East Asian markets, which have been slower to recover’ after the impact of the pandemic.
Heathrow chief executive John Holland-Kaye hailed the performance of flights to the US as he shrugged off the impact of ‘eight days of strikes on the busiest days in May’.
