London Heathrow International Airport handled a total of 144,156 tonnes of cargo in March, up by 0.3% year on year.
Much of that small growth was driven by a 4% year on year increase in cargo flown in the bellyhold of passenger flights.
Heathrow’s projections suggest that Mother’s Day flowers were particularly popular, with an estimated 2,800 tonnes of flowers coming in just before the big day.
Traffic will not have been helped by a 10-hour closure of the airport in March due a power supply failure resulting from a major fire at a local electrical substation.
Cargo handling zones were included in the areas with no power and cargo companies reported disruption and diversions to other airports, with some stakeholders predicting that the impact could last weeks.
The airport had faced some scrutiny over its handling of the incident and questions over why there not measures in place to prevent closure, and UK government Energy Secretary Ed Miliband quickly ordered an investigation into the power outage.
Gateway to growth
Reacting to the latest traffic figures, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye described the airport as the UK’s “gateway to growth”.
Over the course of January – March, Heathrow handled 391,773 tonnes of cargo, down by 0.5 percent on the first quarter of last year.
The April 2024 to March 2025 cargo figure of 1.577m tonnes was up by 5.4 percent year on year, however.
The gateway is looking forward to welcoming eight new and resumed routes in the near future. The new services to be flown by Virgin Atlantic, Air Canada and British Airways will include connections to the capital cities of Saudi Arabia (Riyadh), Canada (Ottawa) and Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur).
During 2023, 48% of all UK air cargo was processed through Heathrow. This amounted to 70% of all UK air cargo by value.
Over 198.5bn worth of goods travelled through Heathrow in 2023. 90% of cargo at Heathrow is transported via belly capacity.
