- Heathrow passengers down 0.1%
- Hurricane Sandy and late half term affect numbers
- Record customer satisfaction in Q3
2012-11-12 — /travelprnews.com/ — Heathrow saw 6 million passengers pass through its terminals last month, down 0.1% on October last year. Hurricane Sandy in the US led to just over 200 flight cancellations and a drop in passengers, many of whom are expected to have rebooked onto flights in November.
The late half term also resulted in fewer passengers passing through the airport, a number which again is expected to be mostly recovered in November. Without these two events, passengers for October would have been up by 1.7%.
Across the month, passengers to North America were up 0.3% compared with October last year. European passenger traffic was up 0.9% overall with a 4.5% rise to Germany, but fell 9.6% to Greece, 7.3% to France and 2.3% to Italy. Of the BRIC economies, passenger numbers were up 5.7% to Brazil, 2.9% to Russia and 4.3% to China, but down 7.3% to India, due to airlines reducing or ceasing services.
Customer satisfaction scores have continued to improve at Heathrow. The latest results from the independent benchmarking programme run by ACI (Airports Council International) gave Heathrow its best ever score in Q3. 75% of passengers rated their experience at the airport as either ‘Excellent’ or ‘Very Good’.
Chief Executive for Heathrow, Colin Matthews, said:
“We are delighted to report record customer satisfaction scores. We are determined to keep on improving Heathrow for passengers and are investing £20 million every week in new facilities.”
Notes to editors
BAA (SP) Limited has changed Heathrow (SP) Limited, with airports under the former BAA group operating as individual brands. As a result, the traffic figures release will now focus on Heathrow Airport.
Contact information
Name Heathrow Airport media centre
Telephone +44 (0)20 8745 7224
Email heathrowmediacentre@baa.com
Name Marianna Panizza
Job Title Senior Press Officer
Telephone 020 8745 7531
Email marianna_panizza@baa.com
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Terminal 5B gates