London Heathrow has been crowned the most connected airport in the world despite recent concerns it may be losing ground on international rivals.
New analysis from global travel data provider Official Airline Guide (OAG) found the West-London hub topped the charts for the second year running.
The figures, which included transfer flights, reveal that Heathrow currently connects travellers to 234 destinations across 85 nations across the globe.
The runner up, Kuala Lumpur International Airport, has only served just over half of London Heathrow’s connections, handling 33,000 compared to 61,000.
Earlier this year, the UK’s largest airport was seen to be losing out to its EU rivals due to lack of investment and high passenger costs.
Chief executive of International Airlines Group (IAG), Luis Gallego, said that Heathrow was “at risk of losing out to rivals such as Paris Charles de Gaulle and Frankfurt if it failed to reduce fees and improve efficiency”.
Tim Clark, Emirates’ airline executive, added that “Heathrow is seriously lagging behind in many of its customer facing functions”, urging it to streamline their processes.
The recent change in travel policy with the requirement of a £10 transit charge for visitors travelling to the UK could risk the loss of this status. This could result in Heathrow losing up to 4m passengers a year.
An estimated 90,000 potential passengers have switched airports since the scheme began for the first half-dozen countries.
However, John Grant, OAG’s chief analyst, recently said that it is “the combination of destinations served, and very importantly, the frequency with which they are served” which gives Heathrow its well-deserved status as it “scores on both courts”.
Heathrow’s number of daily passengers appears to be growing as it hits its busiest summer on record. If this carries on, the mega-hub is on the course of serving 30 million passengers between the months of June and September.
