London Heathrow handled more than eight million passengers in August, becoming the first European airport achieve that figure.
The airport’s busiest-ever day was 1 August, with more than 270,000 passengers – about 250 for each minute of Heathrow’s operating hours.
The biggest terminal, T5, reached a new single-day record on 22 August with more than 112,000 travellers flying in or out. Terminal 5 is the main base for British Airways.
Growth was largely driven by expansion to Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.
The airport’s chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, said: “We achieved that whilst maintaining industry-leading punctuality and service levels.
“This is an outstanding achievement, made possible by the collective efforts of our colleagues, airline partners and the wider airport community who worked as one to deliver excellent service for our passengers and the UK.”
The airport says 49 out of 50 bags travelled on their flights as expected, a 42 per cent improvement year on year. At security, 96 per cent of passengers waited less than five minutes.
Heathrow is the busiest two-runway airport in the world. It has submitted a plan to build a third runway, which is hoped to be operational within a decade – though there is strong opposition to airport expansion.
Overall, the UK’s airports experienced their busiest day since the Covid pandemic on 29 August – with 3,271 departing flights.
Jeremy Bowen, chief executive of the aviation analysts Cirium, told The Independent’s daily travel podcast: “The overarching headline is that consumer resilience is really strong.
“Passenger volumes are still going up, and that's irrespective of cost of living crisis or people worried about tariffs.”
The busiest-ever day for departures from UK airports was in October 2019, with nearly 300 more flights than 29 August. But Mr Bowen said: “I strongly think that in 2026 that we will have our record day.”
The Cirium CEO said there had been “very heavy bookings” from across the UK to North Africa: Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. Flights to and from Saudi Arabia are also performing strongly, with a new low-cost link from Gatwick to Jeddah.
But the US has seen a slight decline in traffic. “Flights going from London into the United States, they're down by 1.4 per cent year on year,” Mr Bowen said.
