Heathrow airport passes 70m passenger milestone
13 April 2012Britain’s biggest airport has hit a new milestone with more than 70 million passengers filing through in the space of 12 months – although Heathrow’s owner admits the increase in its record-breaking year is largely down to Easter.
While BAA has pointed to fuller planes and the airport’s “‘resilience'”, the variation in the Christian calendar means that the Easter bulge in traffic has occurred twice in the last 12 months, this March and in April 2011.
The Easter factor generated almost 7% more passengers in March 2012 compared with the previous year, with 5.7 million people passing through Heathrow’s terminals last month. The load factor, or proportion of plane seats filled by passengers, was also up by 4.2% for the month, which BAA says continues an upward trend.
source: Guardian.co.uk