Heathrow caps off record summer with 8m passengers in August

(Sharecast News) - The number of monthly passengers at Heathrow Airport topped the 8 million mark for the first time ever in August, capping a record summer for the UK travel hub.

A total of 8.04m passengers passed through Heathrow's terminals in August, the airport reported on Thursday, up 0.8% over the same month last year. That puts year-to-date traffic 0.3% ahead of last year at 55.93m.

Terminal numbers reached a record 270,000 on 1 August alone - marking Heathrow's busiest ever day.

Passenger travel to and from its largest market, the European Union, increased 1.8% to 2.84m, which along with increased traffic with Africa, the Middle East and Asia, offset declines from the Americas, domestic UK flights and non-EU European destinations.

"August is set to go down in the history books - Heathrow became the first European airport to handle over eight million passengers in a single month and we achieved that whilst maintaining industry-leading punctuality and service levels," said chief executive Thomas Woldbye.

"This is an outstanding achievement, made possible by the collective efforts of our colleagues, airline partners and the wider airport community who worked as one to deliver excellent service for our passengers and the UK."

In other news, Heathrow reported a 0.3% year-on-year fall in cargo volumes in August to 132,956 metric tonnes, though volumes over the first eight months of the year in total were up 2.3% at 1.05m metric tonnes.