London’s Heathrow airport reported that March this year was a second record-breaking month in a row for passenger numbers with the Easter weekend being its busiest ever.
In a commentary on business and traffic, Heathrow said 6,726,000 had travelled through its terminals last month, with 936,000 passengers over the bank holiday.
During the month, over 94% of passengers rated their overall satisfaction at the airport as ‘good’ or ‘excellent’, it said, adding that work was continuing to optimise current infrastructure, including the £1bn upgrade to 146 security scanners and ongoing investment in the T2 baggage system.
But the airport took a swipe at the government scheme to make all global visitors without legal residence in the UK pay a fee of £10 to enter or transit through the UK, saying that this applied to airside transit passengers would put UK airports at a “competitive disadvantage compared to EU hubs”.
“We’re on a journey to be an extraordinary airport fit for the future and it’s great to see the progress we’re making this year with smooth journeys for a record number of passengers choosing Heathrow, ” said CEO at Heathrow Thomas Woldbye.
“But to keep up the momentum the government needs to exempt airside transit passengers from the ETA scheme to avoid encouraging passengers to spend and do business elsewhere.
“We need to level the playing field, so the UK aviation industry continues to be world-class.”
In March, a total of 143,679 metric tonnes of cargo travelled through the airport, which sits 14 miles from central London and is the UK’s biggest.
