London Heathrow Airport (LHR) has scheduled the highest number of departures since January 2020 this month. The hub will see over 18,800 flights taking off, breaking pre-pandemic levels three years after COVID first shut down the industry. Despite LHR’s success, however, departures from the UK itself remain down 15% but climbing upward still.
Heathrow is back
According to data from data analytics firm Cirium, 12.5 million seats are scheduled for March 2023 from UK airports, spread over 71,617 departures. Leading the charge is none other than the country’s largest airport, London Heathrow, which is breaking its own records this month.
LHR will see 18,860 flights in March, the highest seen since January 2020. This is an important figure, indicating that as the summer high season approaches, the schedules should look much closer to 2019 levels, if not above or at those numbers. With those many flights come passengers too, and the airport may finally get close to exceeding pre-pandemic traffic very soon.
Schedules are obviously subject to change for any number of reasons, although the final figure is unlikely to vary too much. March is a key month for airlines since it marks the beginning of the IATA summer season on the 26th. This is when airlines change up their schedules and boost capacity in the Northern Hemisphere. If March is any indicator of this season, Heathrow is looking at one busy operation.
UK not there yet
While LHR seems to have found the formula to recover, not all British airports have been able to do so. Cirium cites the example of London Southend Airport (SEN), which saw its three operators – Wizz Air, Ryanair, and easyJet, all flee during the pandemic. SEN will only see one departure in March, although it is now increasing operations thanks to easyJet’s return this summer.
Overall, flights out of UK airports are up an impressive 31% from the same month in 2022. However, they are still down 15% compared to 2019, showing that part of the market are yet to make a swift recovery. For now, all airports will be hoping that increasing passenger levels will help them return to profitability this year.
In 2019, just shy of 41 million people visited the UK from around the globe, with tourists from the US leading the pack. Despite dropping COVID restrictions in early 2022, traffic remained just under 30 million last year as well, indicating that not all leisure and business travel has recovered just yet. While this was to be expected, it could explain why overall traffic remains lower today.