London Stansted is growing well after years of stagnation.

London Heathrow Airport (LHR) is losing passenger share to its three key rival London air gateways according to provisional 2015 data from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority. It has now slipped below the 30% mark.

Last year, LHR’s share of passengers at UK airports went from 30.8% in 2014 to 29.8%. While London Gatwick [the UK’s second busiest airport] was static with a 16% share, London’s low-cost carrier airports of Stansted (STN) and Luton (LTN) saw their shares rise significantly to 8.9% and 4.9% respectively (see table below and click to enlarge).

The increasing popularity of these latter airports –and their low-cost airlines – means that LGW, STN and LTN now have a combined share of the UK market exactly equal to that of LHR. STN and LTN are the fourth and fifth biggest airports in the UK with traffic of 22.5m and 12.3m passengers respectively last year.

UK top 20 airports 2015 and their market shares (source: CAA)

All three have also been developing their duty free and travel retail offers substantially. In July, the latest of these retail improvements will be Lagardère Travel Retail’s inauguration of its new DF&TR stores at LTN.

This year, based on growth projections, these three London gateways combined are expected to process more passengers than LHR. The CAA figures show that the passenger growth rate in 2015 was +2.10% for LHR which is constrained by its runway capacity. Against this, LGW had growth of +5.7%, Stansted +12.9%, and LTN surged by +17%.

London’s fifth biggest airport, City, is much smaller and processed 4.3m passengers, growing by +18.4% in 2015.