Which 25 routes from Heathrow airport had over 1 million passengers in 2024?

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• Reney says:

  23 Mar23 March 12:24

  I’m surprised that HKG is 13th yet BA has dropped down to one flight a day.

  • Kowalski says:

    23 Mar23 March 13:34

    I believe Cathay Pacific run at least 5 times daily between Heathrow and Hong Kong

    • Guido says:

      24 Mar24 March 12:40

      As a BA gold card holder and one that has done quite a few of the LHR-HKG legs (most recently earlier this month), I cannot understand why anyone would choose to fly BA to HKG over Cathay, especially on their A350. Everything about the Cathay experience is just so much better. The lounges, the crew and the on board experience are all far superior to what BA has to offer.

  • BBbetter says:

    23 Mar23 March 16:47

    Other airlines can fly over Russia.

    • Ron says:

      23 Mar23 March 18:27

      Don’t think CX fly over Russia.

      • John says:

        23 Mar23 March 20:25

        They do on HK to US, but not on HK to Europe

        • Londonsteve says:

          23 Mar23 March 23:22

          Might be to do with the fact that the European competition also cannot (therefore the longer flight time is not a disadvantage) and they avoid hideously high Russian overflight costs by avoiding the country.

• NorthernLass says:

  23 Mar23 March 13:11

  I think the morning departure from EWR has been binned, which might partly explain the drop in numbers.

  The fact that there’s only one U.K. regional airport in this list goes to show how BA has abandoned the country outside London!

  • BBbetter says:

    23 Mar23 March 16:50

    Doesn’t that show people prefer to fly non-BA from regional airports?
    For example AMS would be even higher on the list if all uk airports were included, thanks to KLM flying to a dozen regional airports?

    • NorthernLass says:

      23 Mar23 March 22:51

      No, it shows that BA is continuing to gut domestic services (apart from EDI, apparently).

  • Shaw Gaubie says:

    31 Mar31 March 19:56

    Blame Walsh. He started it. His reward was Director General of IATA. God help us,

• Fennec says:

  23 Mar23 March 13:14

  What special relationship?! a fair few English folk seem to think England has a reciprocal one with the USA when it’s very much one sided; it’s sycophantic and sad.

  The only special relationship they have is with Canada and you can see how well they treat them..!

  • kevin86 says:

    23 Mar23 March 15:57

    I don’t know any English people who give a monkeys about a “special relationship”.

    • Londonsteve says:

      23 Mar23 March 16:11

      And anyone who did still believe in the ‘special relationship’ will have now woken up with a nasty hangover. Not only does the special relationship no longer exist (if the US ever really took it seriously, which is a moot point), the US is now a state hostile to the UK and the rest of Europe. I never thought I’d have the write this, but we need to forget about them for the forseeable future and in my case, that involves crossing them off my list of potential travel destinations. I’m not interested in ending up finding myself incarcerated for a month because I might have expressed opposition to the US administration on social media.

      • NorthernLass says:

        23 Mar23 March 22:53

        I think you’re conflating the US government with the country, its people and its history. And I hope you have no plans to visit China if you’re concerned about such things!

        • Londonsteve says:

          23 Mar23 March 23:25

          I’m not mixing up the government with the people, no. On the subject of the people owever, fully 50% voted for Trump which is a bad place to start, despite having witnessed his performance during his first administration. It does nothing to sell the people to me, I’m afraid.

          China is also crossed off my list, fret not.

    • Londonsteve says:

      23 Mar23 March 16:14

      It serves to illustrate their authoritarian hostility to anyone they perceive as ‘opposition’ that instead of just deporting someone on the next plane they don’t like the look of, they seek to imprison them to make an example of them as a way of silencing the critics. ‘Land of the free’, sure pal.

      • Andy in Cheshire says:

        23 Mar23 March 17:16

        It will be interesting to see how the number of flights to the US goes down given the politics

        • Londonsteve says:

          23 Mar23 March 18:48

          They might be filled with refugees from the US seeking to flee! Apparently, European academic institutions are already overwhelmed with applicants from the US.

        • Danny says:

          23 Mar23 March 22:08

          I doubt many US academics would be willing to accept the huge paycuts a move to Europe would require.

        • Londonsteve says:

          23 Mar23 March 23:30

          They might be forced to due to their political views. Also, the cost of living in Europe is on average half that of the US today. Lastly, academics are seldom motivated solely by financial matters. They’ll have originally been attracted by the prestige of many US institutions and their solid financial background to fund their research.

      • John says:

        23 Mar23 March 20:54

        My acquaintance had a one-way ticket Asia-US-Canada, and a Canadian visa which permitted him to work there. He was denied entry into the US because they didn’t believe he would take his onward flight to Canada. His mistake was to be nervous because of the tight connection time and say “I’ll definitely miss the flight if you don’t let me through quickly” or something like that.

        The US detained him for 3 days then sent him back to the Asian country where he flew from (all at the US taxpayer’s expense). As he had only been a tourist there, that Asian country refused to let him back in because of the US denial of entry stamp! But being far more sensible than the US, they allowed him to buy a new ticket to Canada.

        Note that this happened under the Obama administration. The recent news stories do not indicate a shift in policy (apart from the thing about anti-Trump views – but the US claims that the French scientist had classified information on his device).

        If Trump/Musk are serious about DOGE (which of course they aren’t really) they would of course do exactly what you say and just escort people to the onward flights they have already paid for, or immediately “self-deport” at their own expense.

• Richie says:

  23 Mar23 March 14:35

  Interesting that LCY doesn’t have Madrid and Munich flights.

  • Tony says:

    23 Mar23 March 16:04

    LCY-MUC seems to be a proper start-stop job. I recall flying this with Lufthansa in a prop plane 20+ yrs ago, then did BA just a few years back.

• Chris says:

  23 Mar23 March 15:32

  BA this Easter has only one LHR-MIA flight, I believe that I read that this is due to delays the delivery of RR engines and parts.

• Ed says:

  23 Mar23 March 16:22

  I’m surprised HKG made it to the list even after Virgin dropped out and BA dropped down to one flight per day.

  Cathay Pacific run five times daily from Heathrow but from my experience these flights are rarely completely full either

  • Danny says:

    23 Mar23 March 17:33

    Cathay’s load factors on LHR to HKG and vv are very high. I know as much because Cathay crew find it a challenge to book staff travel on the Heathrow flights due to the load factors

  • John says:

    23 Mar23 March 21:05

    CX is not stupid. If they only had enough booked pax for 4 planes they would cancel the 5th flight. The fact that this rarely happens indicates that they do have enough pax for the flights they operate.

    The flow of pax is sometimes directional depending on time of year, so the flights to London may be not full but the inbounds to HK may be full, or vice versa. Flights may be profitable even if only the J cabin is full.

• RogerWilco says:

  24 Mar24 March 11:32

  Regarding immigration practices on the Eurostar – it is what it is, sub-optimal, probably to pander to certain political goals.

  It could be different, though. Let’s take the Helsinki – St Petersburg train (you can’t anymore since the Russian invasion of Ukraine) also an EU-Schengen non-EU/non-Schengen route
  The Finnish border guards would start checking docs on the moving train from the last domestic stop until the border. Once done, the train moved on to Russia, where the Russian border guards would mount right after the border, collect passports and give them back stamped in before your destination (either Viipuri or St Pete)
  Going the opposite direction, the same – border guards came on already in St Pete, collected passports, returned them before the border. Customs agents walked through the moving train as well. Once across on the Finnish side, the Finns would come on the train and do the formalities (IIRC while at the border station but maybe on the moving train) No immigration control at either end.
  IIRC on the Finnish side we did 200km/h tops, on the Russian side 220-230 km/h or so.

  Could be done similarly on the Eurostar as well.

  • Londonsteve says:

    24 Mar24 March 17:30

    To the best of my knowledge, the only motivation for Eurostar controls being what they are is to stop people getting to UK soil and claiming asylum. I guess that the airlines check rights of entry to the UK at the boarding gate, whereas the sea routes/Eurotunnel and Eurostar do not. If they did, it would do without the need for having UK Border Force staff at the point of embarkation.

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