London takes top spot – for now

The CAA has published the UK airport statistics for September.

Despite the understandable gloom throughout the UK air transport industry, London is still Europe’s leading air travel centre.

Figures released for September show that 5.5m passengers moved through the capital’s six scheduled airports, an increase of 69% over 2020.  This is in comparison with 16m for September 2019.

When it comes to continental capitals the September figures for Amsterdam were 3.4m and Frankfurt 3.1m respectively. The two Paris airports (Charles de Gaulle 2.9m and Orly 1.8m) totalled 4.7m.

The individual London airports all improved on the September 2019 very poor results with Heathrow totalling 2.5m passengers (+105%). Gatwick 1m (+40%), Stansted 1.6m (+68% and overtaking Gatwick, probably only short-term – and due to Ryanair’s fine performance), Luton 0.7m (+19%), London City (+327%) and Southend 23,000 (+79%).

With the latest government about turn, double whammy, London is again likely to fall behind its European rivals.

Business Travel News will update this story when the October figures are published, hopefully in time for the 13 December issue, the last one of the year.

www.caa.co.uk/uploadedFiles/CAA/Content/Standard_Content/Data_and_analysis/Datasets/Airport_stats/Airport_data_2021_10/Table_09_Terminal_and_Transit_Passengers.pdf

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