Heathrow passenger numbers fall after power outage, seasonal holidays

(Sharecast News) - Heathrow's passenger numbers were lower in March compared with a year earlier, which the airport blamed on the timing of seasonal holidays and a power outage that resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of flights. Heathrow was closed for a total of 10 hours on 21 March after a major fire at National Grid and SSEN's North Hyde nearby substation caused a massive power supply failure.

Meanwhile, the timing of Ramadan and a later Easter this year both impacted travel patterns and adversely affected traffic numbers, the airport said.

As a result, Heathrow flew at total of 6.22m passengers last month, down 7.5% on March 2024. As a result, passenger traffic over the first quarter as a whole was down 1.5% on last year.

The Latin American market - Heathrow's smallest in terms of traffic - was the only major geography to see passenger growth over last March (up 0.7% to 192,000), with EU traffic (its largest market) falling 8.5% to 2.0m and North America (the second largest market) slipping 7.4% to 1.5m.

Nevertheless, the airport said that 144,156 metric tonnes of cargo was flown in March, up 0.3% year-on-year, with the amount of cargo flown in the belly hold of passenger flights up 4% on last year.

"Projections show Mother's Day flowers were particularly popular, with an estimated 2,800 tonnes of flowers coming in just before the celebrations," the company said in a statement.

Despite the setbacks, Heathrow's chief executive Thomas Woldbye said the airport saw "strong demand to travel through Heathrow" in March.

"We are still on track to see another record year in 2025 and colleagues are working hard preparing for a busy Easter and May Bank Holiday getaway," he said.