Heathrow January stats

In a statement last week Heathrow said that demand to travel in January was weaker than expected and over 56% down versus pre-pandemic levels as the hangover from Omicron continued to suppress passenger confidence.

Over 1.3m passengers cancelled or did not book their trips because of Omicron restrictions in December and January.

Passenger throughput for the month was 2.59m, substantially up on the 284,000 the same time last year with a 12-month running total of just 21m passengers as against the 80m for 2019.

Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “After a tough Christmas, Omicron has continued to bite and this has been a weak start to the year. As short-lived as the additional travel restrictions were, they ruined the travel plans of more than 1.3m passengers in the last two months.

“Today’s removal of restrictions for vaccinated passengers in and out of the UK offers a ray of hope, but the Omicron hangover proves demand remains fragile, and at risk to new variants of concern and Government needs to set out a playbook for managing future variants that allows travel and trade to keep flowing.”

www.heathrow.com

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