
Heathrow Airport has celebrated its busiest year on record, with nearly 84 million passengers passing through the West London airport’s doors in 2024 – three million more than the previous record in 2019.
Although the record-breaking passenger numbers aren’t quite enough to crown Heathrow as the world’s busiest airport (no matter what metric you use), Heathrow does remain the most connected airport in the world, according to aviation data firm OAG.
The month of December also proved to be a record-breaker for Heathrow, with the airport welcoming more than seven million passengers over the festive period – 160,000 of whom traveled on Christmas Day (a 13% increase on 2023).
New York remained Heathrow’s most popular destination in 2024, while Los Angeles, Dublin, and Madrid all proved incredibly popular.
Despite operating at near full capacity, Heathrow expects to handle even more passengers this year and is estimating a total of 84.2 million passengers throughout the course of 2025.
Interestingly, the number of passengers heading to Africa dropped by nearly 8% in 2024, while domestic passenger numbers saw a 10% rise over the last 12 months.
Data for other leading airports is still be fully compiled but in 2023, Atlanta Hartsfield (ATL) was once again crowned as the busiest airport in the world as measured by total passenger numbers. Dubai International (DXB) took second place, followed by Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) and then London Heathrow (LHR).
In terms of international passenger numbers, however, Dubai International was number one, followed by London Heathrow in second place. When this metric is used, Atlanta Hartsfield didn’t even make the Top Ten.
Dubai is certainly doing its best to snap at the heels of Atlanta Hartsfield, and in December, DXB actually overtook ATL based on total capacity based on total airline capacity.
Mateusz Maszczynski honed his skills as an international flight attendant at the most prominent airline in the Middle East and has been flying ever since... most recently for a well known European airline. Matt is passionate about the aviation industry and has become an expert in passenger experience and human-centric stories. Always keeping an ear close to the ground, Matt's industry insights, analysis and news coverage is frequently relied upon by some of the biggest names in journalism.