Over 34,000 Daily Passengers: London Luton’s December Operations

London Luton welcomed 1,080,548 roundtrip passengers in December, a fifth lower than in December 2019, based on just-released statistics from the UK Civil Aviation Authority. If spread equally but somewhat unfairly across the month, given the much lower demand on Christmas Day, it had 34,856 daily passengers. As Luton is a point-to-point airport, it is easy to use UK CAA traffic data to understand where passengers went.

Luton in December 2022: a summary

Luton had 99 destinations with at least 1,000 passengers in December, according to the UK CAA (as shown on the map below). They were spread across Western Europe (54), Central and Eastern Europe (39), North Africa (four), and the Middle East (two). They involved 36 countries.

Some 92% of Luton’s 1,080,550 passengers were international. However, its domestic network still involved Belfast International, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, Jersey, and Aberdeen, all served by easyJet. Analyzing December traffic rather than the summer obviously impacted Inverness and Jersey figures in particular.

With 49% of passengers, Western Europe was Luton’s biggest market. It had 533,692 passengers against 488,202 for CEE (45%), the Middle East (39,543; 4%), and North Africa (19,111; 1%).

Image: GCMap.

The top 10 countries

The 10 nations mentioned below accounted for nearly 7 in 10 Luton passengers. Romania had more passengers than anywhere else, equivalent to 2,449 passengers daily each way (PDEW). Poland was close behind, helped by Wizz Air’s new Bydgoszcz route, which launched on December 14th, followed two days later by Łódź, which returned after last being served in March 2013. Romania and Poland accounted for over 1 in 4 of Luton’s passengers (27%). Notice that the UK domestic market was the biggest within Western Europe.

Photo: Karolis Kavolelis | Shutterstock.

The top 10 routes

Given the time of the year, it should not be surprising that more passengers traveled to/from skiing-driven Geneva than anywhere else. It saw an average of 743 PDEW. easyJet, the sole operator, had an average of six daily flights, but 11 on much more demanded Saturdays. Nonetheless, it had a seat load factor of just 75%, lower than Luton’s December average (77%). A relative lack of snow this year, impacting demand, might explain Geneva’s lower-than-expected SLF.