Heathrow back as No 1

Heathrow is back as the world’s busiest international airport according to OAG who has published the statistics of the week commencing 16 May.

Three years ago, the world’s top 20 international airports could probably be listed by many readers.  Not so 12 months back, but it does seem that things are returning to normal although the 2019 passenger throughput figure may be a little way off.

Whilst Heathrow will be well pleased with the OAG stats this is not the same for everyone.

Unfortunately, what was the world’s second-largest international airport at this time in 2019, Hong Kong, is now down in 84th place with only 12% of historic capacity being operated despite Cathay Pacific announcing the relaunch of a daily Heathrow service in June. Similarly, Seoul Incheon was in fifth position and now sits in 50th place with a near 80% decline in international airline capacity; both markets are heavily reliant on Chinese connecting traffic making their future recovery heavily dependent on access to China reopening soon.

London is very much back as the global centre of leisure and commercial airline travel (as anyone visiting the central area last week will vouch for) with Amsterdam now in second place and Paris third.  The major hubs of Doha/Dubai are now each down around 6% of 2019 levels with a high proportion of transit passengers.

www.oag.com

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