Yesterday, in the morning before my sojourn north, I was reading a magazine called Departures. It is a travel magazine from American Express. It is clearly high end/luxury travel information. Always fun to dream!
There was an article on London hotels, restaurants, and the airports including an extended write up on London Heathrow Airport. So this morning, being a holiday, the desk is quiet so I began to ask the question. How many flights are there to Heathrow from the USA? Can you imagine?? Really stop for a moment and think. How many flights each way, do you think there are between London Heathrow Airport and the USA? I was not even close with 28 years of experience in this industry.
Counting first is the obvious airport JFK, then I began to go about the country, as asked my Sabre reservation program how many flights. I probably skipped a few, but there are 15 other cities with nonstop flights to London, mostly to Heathrow. Only a few flight to the alternate airport Gatwick.
Before I give you the number of flights I found, how many people do you think are on these flights? Most of the planes are Boeing 747 or 777, but there are also lots of Airbus’s. The 700’s can carry up to 525 people and the double decker 300’s can carry 853! Though most are smaller with 250-300 passengers! I did not go to each plane and count the passenger but one could do so through SeatGuru.
So back to the number of flights. NYC has 24 nonstop flights to London Heathrow and 2 to Gatwick. Of those flights 10 are British Airways. 15 flights from JFK, 9 from Newark. Now to the rest of the country, all the other airports are small in comparison, with Chicago O’Hare 9 and LAX 8. Totally all the cities I came up with 89 nonstop flights from the USA to London. Now many of the passengers are not going to London but beyond, but none the less, over 23,000 people cross the Atlantic Ocean to London daily! This does not count the nonstop flights to the other major cities in Europe: Paris, Madrid, Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, Milan, Rome and Zurich just to name a few. Nor does this count the nonstop flights from Heathrow across the Pacific with nonstop flights to Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore to begin.
Even after all these years these long haul numbers and distances still mind boggle me! 473,231 the number of flights in and out of Heathrow annually and 1,300 daily!
Here is the final trivia on London Heathrow:
Passenger numbers 2016
Annual passengers: 75.7 million
Daily average total number: 206,800 (51% arrivals / 49% departures)
Busiest day ever recorded (passenger numbers): 31 July 2016 with 257,922
Busiest year ever recorded (passenger numbers): 2016 with 75.7 million
Percentage of international passengers: 94% (71 million)
Percentage of domestic passengers: 6% (4.6 million)
Percentage of business travelers: 34% (25.7 million)
Percentage of leisure travelers: 66% (50 million)
Percentage of transfer passengers: 30% (22.7 million)
Now when are you going to London Heathrow?
AlwaysHarriet 