Heathrow Airport: London airport becomes world's fourth busiest airport after 7 million passengers in October

Heathrow Airport has announced that it has become the fourth busiest airport in the world with around 7m passengers travelling through the west London airport last month. This figure is up 19% from 5.9 million during the same month last year.

During the October half-term school holiday, 2.2 million passengers passed through Heathrow’s terminals, with Dubai, New York and Los Angeles among the most popular destinations. Last month’s total was less than one per cent below the pre-pandemic figure from October 2019.

Heathrow said data from aviation analytics provider OAG show it was the world’s fourth busiest airport last month. The airport claimed that the busy October has helped it to “prepare” for “the peak season of festive travel ahead”.

After reopening its borders, Hong Kong became Heathrow’s 12th route to pass one million passengers for the year. The airport’s new chief executive Thomas Woldbye said: “I’ve learned a lot about Heathrow in my first few weeks, but one thing that really stands out to me is the passion and drive of colleagues to get people away smoothly on their journeys.”

Woldbye started his role as chief executive last month and said it was “humbling” to lead the airport. He was previously the boss of Denmark’s Copenhagen airport and replaced John Holland-Kaye, who was Heathrow’s chief executive for more than nine years.

Woldbye pledged to make the airport “even better for our customers and the British economy”. He will oversee multi billion-pound plans to upgrade facilities over the next three years, including installing a new baggage system in Terminal 2 and 3D security scanners.