London City airport has seen passenger numbers return to around 70 per cent of pre-Covid levels so far this summer.
The airport served 640,000 travellers in June and July, as it remains “on course” to reach three million annual passengers by the end of this year.
By comparison, London City catered for a record 5.1 million passengers in 2019, while numbers slumped to 905,000 in 2020 and 714,000 in 2021 due to the impact of the pandemic on travel.
London City stressed that its short-haul schedule was due to “operate as planned” during August, despite other larger London airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick having to cap capacity due to a shortage of staff. The airport expects passenger numbers of more than 300,000 this month.
The key business destinations of Amsterdam, Edinburgh and Zurich continue to be London City’s busiest routes, although its policy of trying to attract more leisure-orientated routes has seen strong demand for new flights to Ibiza, Florence, Palma, Nice and Malaga.
The airport’s next new route will be Sun Air’s flights to Billund, home of Lego, in Denmark starting on 5 September with six services per week.
London City’s chief executive Robert Sinclair, said: “We have made a conscious effort with our airlines to attract more leisure routes and passengers this summer, and the fact we could reach close to one million passengers for the period is testament to the resilience of our operation and quality of the passenger experience we offer.”
The airport also emphasised that it has been fully staffed this summer and passengers took an average of less than 25 minutes to get from the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) train station to their gate.