Three of the UK’s busiest airports have reported blended outcomes for passengers dealt with in August – the height summer season vacation month.
London Stansted dealt with 2 per cent extra passengers final month than in August 2019, with a complete of two.91 million. Its busiest day was 18 August 2023, with 100,561 passengers passing by way of – a fee of 70 per minute.
The busiest routes have been Dublin, Istanbul and Palma de Mallorca.
Nevertheless it was not the Essex airport’s busiest-ever month: that was in August 2018, which additionally noticed its three busiest single days.
All UK airports have been hit by the nationwide air visitors management failure on financial institution vacation Monday, which prompted the cancellation of greater than 2,000 flights to, from and inside the UK.
Gareth Powell, Stansted’s managing director, stated: “Throughout the summer season, regardless of very excessive passenger volumes and operational challenges such because the current air visitors management outage, now we have delivered a powerful and constant stage of customer support with a mean safety queue time of simply over six minutes throughout our busiest departure intervals of the day.”
Stansted’s sister within the MAG organisation, Manchester airport, dealt with barely extra passengers: 3.09 million. However it’s lagging behind pre-pandemic ranges, at 93 per cent of 2019 figures.
The UK’s busiest airport, London Heathrow, dealt with 7.5 million passengers in August – a fee of 168 per minute – however that continues to be 2.6 per cent down on the determine for 2019.
The airport stated in a press release: “Passenger satisfaction was larger than pre-pandemic, reflecting the funding the airport, airways and their floor handlers have made in recruiting and coaching over 25,000 new colleagues within the final two years.
“This additional resilience meant that whereas flights at Heathrow have been impacted by the UK-wide air visitors restrictions in August, operations rapidly returned to regular.” The common wait time for safety was 90 seconds.
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“Passengers used the additional time within the airport to fill up on meals as Pret A Manger offered practically a million sandwiches this summer season,” the airport stated.
“Others indulged in retail remedy to get ‘seashore prepared’, with a pair of sun shades offered each two minutes.”
The outgoing chief govt, John Holland-Kaye stated: “I’m very pleased with the way in which colleagues throughout Workforce Heathrow made positive that passengers had an excellent begin to their summer season holidays, with report ranges of passenger satisfaction and common safety queue instances of lower than two minutes – Heathrow is again to its finest.”
Mr Holland-Kaye’s successor is Thomas Woldbye, presently the boss of Copenhagen airport.
The remaining airport within the UK’s prime 4, London Gatwick, has but to report its August visitors figures.
