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Airlines on both sides of the Atlantic are bracing for their busiest Christmas season as tens of millions of passengers take to the skies.
In the UK, carriers will fly 6.1mn seats between December 20 and January 2, a 5 per cent increase on the previous record set in 2019, according to aviation data company Cirium.
The most popular international destinations for UK departures are Amsterdam, Dublin, Geneva, Paris and Tenerife.
Across the Atlantic, a record 54mn passengers are forecast to fly on US carriers between December 19 and January 6, according to trade group Airlines for America (A4A).
US airlines are offering 140,000 more seats each day than they did during the 2023 holiday period, A4A added. Orlando, Las Vegas, Cancún, Fort Lauderdale and Honolulu are among the popular destinations.
The record Christmas is the closing chapter on a busy year for airlines in the UK and US, and reflects the sustained strong demand for travel since the pandemic ended.
Airline bosses believe consumers are prioritising holidays and travel over other discretionary spending, even following several years of high inflation.
Still, ticket prices have fallen in many leading markets in 2024, and some airlines including Ryanair, Europe’s largest, reported a drop in profit over the summer.
In the UK, passengers are also increasingly choosing to travel on Christmas Day itself.
More than 800 flights are scheduled to depart UK airports on Christmas Day this year, up a fifth on 2019 and 47 per cent more than a decade ago.
Low-cost carrier easyJet and London’s Heathrow airport are among the major companies to forecast their busiest winter holiday season.
Sophie Dekkers, easyJet’s chief commercial officer, said the carrier will fly 4.1mn customers across its European network during the peak Christmas and New Year period, with its busiest day expected on December 27.
Paris, Geneva and Tenerife are among easyJet’s most popular destinations.
“The winter holidays are an important time of year for travel for millions of people,” she said.
Executives at Heathrow airport will be hoping for no further disruption to flights, after more than 100 were cancelled over the weekend because of high winds.
“Our focus remains on ensuring smooth, joyful journeys — whether it is helping passengers get away for Christmas to reunite with their loved ones, or making sure cargo reaches its destination on time,” Heathrow’s chief executive Thomas Woldbye said in a statement issued before the weekend’s disruption.
In the US, United Airlines expects passenger numbers to rise 12 per cent from last year to 9.9mn, and its busiest days will include Friday December 27 and Saturday December 28.
The strong end to the year comes as global airlines are preparing for a record year in 2025.
Passenger numbers are expected to reach 5.2bn in 2025, rising almost 7 per cent compared with 2024, and the first time that the number of passengers exceeds the 5bn mark, global lobby group International Air Transport Association said.
The figure represents slower growth than the 10.7 per cent achieved this year, with Willie Walsh, Iata’s director-general, noting that the figures represented a “return to more normal growth levels following the extraordinary pandemic recovery”.
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