London Heathrow was officially the second-busiest international airport in the world in 2025

"The west London hub offered travellers flights to an impressive 226 destinations across 80 different countries and so, as you'd expect, it got very, very busy. In fact, a new report revealed that Heathrow was the world's second-busiest international airport in 2025. OAG looked at flight schedules data from January to December 2025 to discover which airports were the busiest internationally and globally (the latter included domestic flights) across Europe."

"The report reckoned that LHR had 49 million scheduled international seats in 2025, which is one percent more than in 2024 and four percent more than in 2019. When OAG added together its international and domestic seat capacity, Heathrow emerged as Europe's busiest airport and the fourth busiest in the world. Altogether, it had 52.1 million scheduled seats in 2025. Globally, the London airport was beaten by Tokyo Haneda Airport, Dubai International Airport and Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which took the top spot."

"That's an average of more than over 231,000 people arriving and departing each day. It also had its busiest ever December, with 7.2m passengers in total. Obviously, there's a major gap between OAG's seat capacity data and the actual number of passengers passing through Heathrow. Scheduled seat capacity is often a lot less than actual seats taken up because airlines tend to reduce their planned capacity during uncertain periods."

London Heathrow offered flights to 226 destinations across 80 countries and recorded 49 million scheduled international seats in 2025, up 1% from 2024 and 4% from 2019. Combining international and domestic capacity produced 52.1 million scheduled seats, making Heathrow Europe's busiest airport and the world's fourth busiest by seat capacity, behind Tokyo Haneda, Dubai and Atlanta. Heathrow handled a record 84.5 million passengers in 2025, averaging over 231,000 daily and reaching a busiest December of 7.2 million passengers. Scheduled seat capacity often underestimates actual passengers due to airlines adjusting planned capacity and unclear treatment of connecting flights. Heathrow awaits approval for a £49 billion expansion including a third runway and additional facilities.

Read at Time Out London