Winter-sun destinations drive long-haul uptick at Heathrow in December
St. Lucia, anyone?
December passenger numbers for Heathrow have been published
We now have the December traffic statistics for Heathrow airport.
The month did not end well, as the emergence of the “Kent variant” of the virus prompted many countries to suspend flights from the UK. That was followed by the UK imposing a national lock-down which bans non-essential travel and the introduction of mandatory pre-departure COVID tests for international arrivals.
But despite that, looking back on the month as a whole, performance was surprisingly strong, especially for long-haul markets.
Long-haul
Top performing region was Latin America, which according to Heathrow includes the Caribbean. In second place was Africa, another popular winter-sun region before flights to South Africa got banned. Only just behind was the Middle East, with Dubai one of the markets that didn’t require quarantine at the time.
Still trailing along in last place was North America, still subject to travel restrictions which show no sign of going away any time soon. However, even in that region, some signs of life were apparent in the run up to Christmas.
Source: heathrow.com, GridPoint analysis
Short-haul
There are fewer winter-sun destinations in Europe and with ski resorts shut across most of Europe, short-haul volumes were weaker than long-haul in December. I believe that is the first time we have seen that since the pandemic started. Nevertheless, the figures were still on an upward trend compared to November.
Source: heathrow.com, GridPoint analysis
Prospects for 2021
Given all the new restrictions, it is hard to be anything other than pessimistic about the near term outlook for Heathrow volumes. On the 19th December, there were 642 flights from Heathrow, but yesterday there were only 421 (source: Eurocontrol).
In a recent post, I looked at the likely trajectory of the pandemic in the UK over the next few months. That suggests that if the current lockdown proves to be effective in bringing down transmission and the vaccination programme proceeds smoothly, by May the UK could be back down to very low infection levels. With a bit of a helping hand from the weather, perhaps we can be back on a decent upward trend by then.
The popularity of winter-sun destinations in December does seem to show that there is quite a bit of pent up demand out there, if people feel safe to travel and are allowed to.
With what looks like at least another three months of being cooped up in the house ahead, that pressure is only going to keep building.
