Heathrow Airport CEO John Holland-Kaye has reported a record passenger year at Heathrow Airport, with its airlines carrying a total of 74.9m passengers in calendar year 2015.

 

This also came in the same year that the airport was held up by passengers as the ‘Best Airport in Western Europe’ in the Skytrax Global Airport Awards and as ‘Airport of the Year’ in the Independent’s Travel Awards.

 

Holland-Kaye said: “2015 has been a banner year for Heathrow, serving more passengers than ever and being recognised in a number of awards as the best major airport in Europe for both passenger service and eco-innovation. The record levels of passenger satisfaction are due to a significant increase in training, apprenticeships and the number of front-line colleagues moving into management roles.”

 

 

Airport management pointed to ‘larger, quieter aircraft’ making the difference in contributing to the increase in annual passenger volumes, with seats per aircraft up 2.1% to an average of 209, while load factors remained at 76.5% and passengers per aircraft increased by 1.9% to 160.

 

Significantly, the airport added that by the end of 2015, more than 20 daily A380 departures and arrivals were operated by eight airlines.

 

EMERGING MARKETS DRIVE ‘GROWTH’

Airport management added: “Emerging markets continued to be a driver of traffic growth at Heathrow, with passenger volumes up 14% to China, 8% to Latin America and 6% to the Middle East. Heathrow continued to play a leading role in helping Britain’s exports reach global markets, with the UK’s largest port by value recording cargo volumes of 1.5m metric tonnes for the year.”

 

In the full 2015 calendar year, Heathrow traffic to its main destinations by continent was as follows: Europe 31.1m (+3.9%); North America 17.2m (+1.7%); Asia Pacific 10.4m (+0.3%); Middle East 6.3m (+5.8%); UK 5.1m (-2.7%); Africa 3.2m (-6.5%); Latin America 1.2m (+8.3%).

 

In December 2015, passenger volumes ‘remained consistent’ with 5.9m passengers travelling through Heathrow over the festive season.