Heathrow issues warning on hub ‘competitiveness’ despite record July

London Heathrow set another monthly record for passenger traffic in July, but the UK hub has again warned of the “devastating” impact on its transit traffic from the new Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system.

The airport catered for 7.98 million passengers last month, up by 4.2 per cent on July 2023, as Heathrow benefited from the start of the UK school holidays. Weekly traffic surpassed 1.8 million travellers for the first time during three consecutive weeks from 8-28 July.

But Heathrow also warned that the UK government’s current policy of making transit passengers acquire an ETA, even if they are not entering the country, was hitting its “hub competitiveness”.

Currently the ETA, which was initially introduced in 2023 for Qatari nationals, only applies to passport holders from seven countries in the Middle East: Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. But it is due to be rolled out to other nations imminently.

“While Heathrow continues to attract new routes and record passenger numbers, the latest data following the introduction of the ETA shows that Heathrow has lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes operating to and from the seven countries included in the scheme, since its introduction in 2023,” said Heathrow in a statement.

“This is devastating for our hub competitiveness. We urge government to review the inclusion of airside transit passengers – every little bit of extra competitiveness that government can deliver for aviation will help deliver vital growth for the whole of the UK economy.”

Heathrow made a similar plea for transit travellers to be excluded from the ETA regime earlier this year and is now waiting to see if there will be a policy change from the new Labour government in London.

In its monthly update for July, Heathrow announced that traffic for the first seven months of 2024 had reached 47.8 million passengers, which was a 6.9 per cent increase on the same period of last year.

Traffic to the Asia-Pacific region has seen the largest growth so far this year, with passenger numbers rising by 14 per cent to 6.2 million. The second largest increase was for UK domestic flights, which saw a 10.6 per cent year-on-year rise to 2.7 million passengers. Although Africa has seen a 7.8 per cent decline to 1.9 million passengers over the same period.

Doha and Dublin have become the latest destinations to reach the one million passenger mark for traffic to and from Heathrow this year – joining Dubai and New York’s JFK airport as the latest airports to reach this milestone.

Heathrow’s CEO Thomas Woldbye said: “In July, we were smashing a passenger record almost every single day and we’re chasing down our never before seen goal of serving 8 million passengers in a single month.”