Heathrow 12-month post Olympics

Just fewer than 7m passengers passed through Heathrow in August, an increase of 7.7% on the year previous.  This high growth is essentially due to the relatively poor figures during the London Olympics.

Load factors were high again whilst average aircraft size maintained its upward trend as more and more A380s used the airport.  The average number of seats per aircraft was 204.2, up 3.4%, whilst the number of passengers on each flight rose 6.9% to 168.9, resulting in a load factor of 82.7%, up 2.6 percentage points on August 2012. 

Broadly consistent with recent trends, Middle East and Central Asia traffic improved, with an increase of 13.4%. East Asia and South Asia were up 21.3% and 18.3% respectively. BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies contributed to that growth, with China up 28.3%, and India up 18.7%.  Overall, traffic to the BRICS rose 13.4% on the previous year. 

European traffic performance was strong, up 8.6% including growth to Italy, France and Germany.

Heathrow’s inadequacies are well known but the attraction of London more than outweighs any problems with the airport.  Most strategists agree that the growth will continue. www.heathrowairport.com

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