London Stansted had its second-busiest month ever in August despite the impact of the national air traffic control failure, with more than 2.91 million passengers passing through the Essex site.
Figures show the airport also recorded its busiest day of the year with 100,561 passengers travelling through the terminal on August 18 – the fourth busiest day ever at London Stansted. The total number of passengers served at the airport in the 12-months ending August 2023 stands at 27.1 million, an increase of 40% on the previous year’s total.
At Heathrow, 7.5m passengers travelled through the airport in August. Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye said: “I am very proud of the way colleagues across Team Heathrow made sure that passengers had a super start to their summer holidays, with record levels of passenger satisfaction and average security queue times of less than two minutes – Heathrow is back to its best.”
Manchester Airport served 3.1m passengers in August – an increase of 13% on August 2022 and the highest figure of the summer. A survey of more than 1,000 passengers at the airport over July and August also showed that 98% went through security in under 15 minutes and 79% got through in under five minutes – the best figures on record.
Manchester Airport Managing Director Chris Woodroofe said: “We’ve delivered one of the best summers ever for our passengers with more people than ever before getting through security in under 15 minutes despite huge numbers coming through on their holidays. Because of the nature of international travel there will always be moments where things didn’t go according to plan, but we had the people in place to make sure these hitches were fixed quickly. Our new 100-person resilience team, trained in a variety of roles across the airport, really helped make sure issues didn’t affect the vast majority of travellers when they did crop up.”
Image: London Stansted Airport
