Heathrow saw 4.85 million passengers in February, a record for the month and up 1.0% on February 2012. Adjusting for the fact that 2012 was a leap year, traffic was up 4.6%.
BA’s acquisition of bmi contributed to the increase, which was driven by a 1.8% rise in the average number of seats per aircraft to 198.4 seats, and a 2.4 percentage point increase in load factor (how full the average flight is) to 69.6%.
European traffic performed well, up 4.4%. Italy was up 11.6%, Portugal up 9.0%, Germany was up 8.2% and Greece was down 7.4%. Of the BRIC economies, traffic was up 29.8% for China, 4.1% for India and 3.1% for Russia. The only reduction was an 8.3% drop in traffic with Brazil, resulting in an overall increase in BRIC traffic of 5.1%. Middle Eastern traffic also performed strongly overall, up 6.2% on the same month last year. Traffic was down to North America (1.9%), Latin America (4.6%) and Africa (11.7%).
Cargo was down 4.3% on last February, in line with EU-wide trends.
Chief Executive for Heathrow, Colin Matthews, said:
“This month’s figures reflect larger, fuller aircraft being used at Heathrow, not the addition of new routes to emerging economies which are so vital to UK trade, jobs and economic growth.”
