London Heathrow set another passenger record in January - helped by a surge in transatlantic traffic during the month.
The UK hub airport enjoyed its busiest ever January catering for 6.3 million passengers, which was an increase of 5.4 per cent on the same month in 2024. The overall number of flights at Heathrow also rose by 4.6 per cent to 38,699 during the month.
Heathrow’s traffic was boosted by an 8 per cent year-on-year rise in the number of passengers flying between the UK and US, which reached 1.2 million during the month.
The airport also recorded an 11.7 per cent year-on-year increase in traffic to Latin America, which rose to 217,000 passengers. While traffic rose significantly on flights to and from the Middle East, up 9.3 per cent to 774,000 passengers and by 8.9 per cent to Asia Pacific destinations (985,000 passengers).
The strong start to the year at Heathrow comes after the airport set a new annual passenger record of 83.9 million passengers in 2024.
Heathrow has also just received backing from the UK government to build its controversial third runway, which would allow it to significantly increase its currently constrained capacity.
Thomas Woldbye, the airport’s CEO, added: “2025 has started how we mean to go on - serving record breaking passenger numbers and delivering trade and investment across the whole of the UK.
“To ensure we continue on this upwards trajectory, the government has signalled their support for an expanded Heathrow. We'll now work with ministers to progress the necessary policy changes required to advance our growth plans.”
Heathrow added in its statement that it was currently “working with our stakeholders” to finalise plans for the third runway, which it intends to submit to the government by this summer.