Heathrow is no longer one of the world’s 10 most connected airports, according to a new study.
Data shared by aviation analyst Cirium shows that Heathrow has dropped down the power rankings for connectivity. The airport ranks 12th for the number of destinations served, down from eighth in 2023.
Heathrow has non-stop flights to 221 destinations, down from 228 last year. Istanbul ranks as the world’s best-connected airport, serving 309 destinations, followed by Frankfurt (296), Paris Charles de Gaulle (282), Amsterdam Schiphol (270) and Chicago O’Hare (270).
Gatwick serves 218 destinations, only three fewer than Heathrow, making it the best-connected “secondary” airport in Europe.
In recent years Heathrow has been hit by post-pandemic staff shortages, IT failures (a recurring problem for its biggest airline, BA) and baggage-handling issues, including an incident where stacks of luggage were seen piled up outside the airport. The disruption continues; Border Force agents at Heathrow will go on strike over the end of the school summer holidays, one of the airport’s busiest periods.
However, while Heathrow has experienced a series of performance and PR hiccups in recent years and has dropped down the power rankings in terms of connectivity, this year’s ranking is an improvement on its pre-pandemic position and the airport recently recorded its busiest ever day. So are things on the up, or the decline, for Britain’s biggest airport?
An emerging league of mega-airports
While Frankfurt, Paris and Amsterdam are long-standing European travel hubs alongside Heathrow, number one in the Cirium list for connectivity is Istanbul Airport. The Turkish hub opened in 2018 after all commercial passenger flights were transferred from Atatürk Airport, and it has rapidly emerged as one of the busiest in the world. Last year it handled 76 million passengers, only three million fewer than Heathrow.
The ascendance of Istanbul is in large part down to its geographical location, says aviation expert John Strickland.
He explains: “Hubs are very much influenced by their geography so this makes for difficult like-for-like comparisons. For example, the location of Istanbul means it is possible for Turkish Airlines to connect many destinations in Africa and Asia using smaller, shorter-range aircraft such as the A320, while airlines in some other locations would have to use larger, longer-range, wide-bodied aircraft which may not be justified by traffic levels.”
Other airports in the Cirium list include Dubai, which overtook Heathrow as the world’s busiest airport for international traffic in 2014. Within a decadethe Middle Eastern hub will move to a new desert location and have a capacity of 260 million passengers per year. Jeddah Airport in Saudi Arabia is another on the ascendance, with passenger numbers up 36 per cent to 42.7 million in 2023, compared to the previous year.
Relative newcomers on the Cirium connectivity list include Guangzhou Airport in China (opened 2004) and Shanghai Pudong International Airport (1999), and the league table of airport megahubs will likely see other new names in years to come. In India, Noida International Airport is set to become the biggest in the country when it opens later this year (with capacity for 70 million passengers), and Singapore has plans for a new Terminal Five that will more than double the size of the airport by the mid-2030s.
The challenges for Heathrow
Heathrow’s relegation from Cirium’s top 10 list comes during a period of mixed successes and challenges for the airport. One of the biggest issues for Heathrow has been the arrival of theelectronic travel authorisation (ETA) system.
Passengers without a visa or legal residence in the UK, travelling from Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan must obtain an ETA, which costs £10 and is similar to the USA’s ESTA programme. The visa-waiver programme will roll out to arrivals from most of the rest of the world this autumn, with the EU, the EEA and Switzerland to follow next year.
Last week, Heathrow reported that it had lost 90,000 transfer passengers on routes from the seven countries in the scheme and described it as “devastating for our hub competitiveness”. Around 22 per cent of all Heathrow passengers are transferring between flights.
“Heathrow still depends on the support of connecting traffic to make a number of destinations viable. Anything that adds additional cost to ticket prices reduces competitiveness for passengers making indirect journeys as this market segment is particularly price sensitive when multiple routing options are available,” says Strickland.
Heathrow received another blow in February, when the Italian flag carrier ITA Airways announced it would not be serving London Heathrow for the summer of 2024, shifting services to London Gatwick and London City Airport. The airport is famously expensive to operate at, and the Civil Aviation Authority has lowered its cap on how much Heathrow can charge airlines per passenger, to be reviewed again at the end of 2026.
The future of Heathrow
Going down from 228 to 221 destinations year-on-year is no drastic change for Heathrow. Other airports have experienced similar year-on-year drops: Frankfurt was down from 304 to 296 destinations, Paris Charles de Gaulle was down from 289 to 282. These are decisions made by airlines, not airports.
It is also worth noting that, using different metrics, other aviation analysts place Heathrow as the best-connected airport on the planet. In the latest Megahubs Index, published by OAG Aviation last September, Heathrow ranked in top spot based on the volume of scheduled international connections rather than the total number of destinations served.
Connectivity rankings aside, management at Heathrow (and itsnew Saudi stakeholders) will be feeling buoyant about the year’s performance so far. The airport saw its busiest first quarter on record (18.5m passengers from January 1 to March 31), swinging from a £60m loss during that period in 2023 to a £83m profit in 2024.
Heathrow also recorded its busiest day ever this summer: 268,000 passengers passed through its terminals on June 30. This came after the airport overtook Denver, Tokyo and Istanbul to become the fourth busiest airport in the world for passenger numbers, according to a study released by the Airports Council International (ACI). Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Dubai and Dallas may serve more per year, but only Dubai trumps Heathrow for international passengers. Heathrow anticipates 2024 will be a bumper year, with a record 81.4m passengers forecast.
The elephant in the terminal, of course, is whether Heathrow will or will not receive a third runway – an idea first tabled in 2003 but which has not come to fruition.
The extra runway could increase capacity at Heathrow by 260,000 flights per year, adding to the current limit of 480,000, and could bring as many as 40 new destinations to Heathrow’s roster with passenger capacity rising to 142 million. Labour has signalled that it is “open-minded” to the suggestion of a third runway, providing that it is compatible with climate targets. This week the government approved London City Airport’s terminal expansion, upping its annual capacity from 6.5m to nine million passengers, suggesting Labour could take a sympathetic approach to aviation infrastructure development in the face of a vocal climate lobby.
Heathrow is not experiencing a fall from grace, but it is at risk of dropping in significance asmega-airports emerge elsewhere in the world. Things begin to look even more precarious as landing fees remain so high that the CAA felt the need to intervene, whilst the new £10 ETA could threaten to deter transfer passengers. Heathrow will always be the UK’s number one airport, but whether it can remain in the global premier league of airports, and make its way back up that Cirium connectivity list, is in the balance.
