Article from BTNews 22 APRIL 2019
Heathrow record continues
In the month the UK should have left the EU, statistics from Heathrow for March showed business still climbing. CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “Despite Brexit uncertainty, Heathrow remains a bright light for the UK.”
In a key riposte to Remainers’ predictions of economic doom, the airport’s passenger numbers continued to climb, with more than 6.5m customers travelling through the hub and ringing in the 29th consecutive month of record growth.
Notable spikes were recorded on St Patrick’s Day and Mother’s Day. An airport spokesman said: “Attitudes towards travel remain strong despite ongoing uncertainty around Brexit.”
Africa performed especially well, increasing by 6.2% compared to March last year. Domestic connections also saw a slight 0.2% uplift with British Airways launching a second service to Inverness and Flybe growing its loads by more than a fifth (23%) with an inaugural flight to Cornwall on 31 March.
The figures revealed more than 149,000 metric tonnes of cargo travelled through the UK’s biggest port by value, which officials said “further demonstrates the importance of Heathrow in a post Brexit world”.
March also saw Heathrow launching its new Innovation Prize to fund ideas and solutions to address the environmental impact of aviation. The prize is sponsored by the airport’s new Centre of Excellence for Sustainability.
OUR READERS' FINEST WORDS (All times and dates are GMT)
All comments are filtered to exclude any excesses but the Editor does not have to agree with what is being said. 100 words maximum
Allan Schoenherr, Prague, Czech Republic
Imagine how much it could have risen without the "ongoing uncertainty of brexit"! Will we ever know the true cost of Brexit? Even if it eventually gets cancelled a truly staggering amount of money has been sunk into it so far !
John Davidson, France
BA at one point made me a Gold member of their Exec Club, because I was using the airline as a hub for my frequent trips between Amman and Washington, via Heathrow and Paris. After that travel ended, they wrote to tell me that they were downgrading me to silver. This news came via a letter, to which I responded, saying the problem was Heathrow was so mammoth and premium/Gold pax didn't seem to get much help. The BA correspondent kindly phoned to follow up, and I told him that he should change the premium pax experience at Heathrow if they wanted to keep their frequent flyers…happier. At Paris (CDG 2A, but also Orly for OpenSkies), the experience was great and smooth. Once you knew the ropes. For example, if you're flying out of CDG on BA, it's better for taxi drop-off to ask for 2C rather than 2A, because the walk for the latter was (and still is, but I don't use it any more) shorter. OpenSkies was a delight when it opened, and I used it often, despite its defects (pax in NYC flying OpenSkies couldn't use BA's biz-class lounge, among other irritants — collecting/using miles having been another).