Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye: 2018 was the best ever year at Heathrow

Heathrow CEO John Holland-Kaye: 2018 was the best ever year at Heathrow

(PRESS RELEASE) LONDON, 21-Feb-2019 — /EuropaWire/ — Heathrow reports 2018 as the best year in the airport’s history after eight years of consecutive growth. Commenting on an exceptional year at Heathrow, the airport’s CEO John Holland-Kaye said:

“2018 was the best ever year at Heathrow. We were voted best airport in Western Europe by passengers, while continuing to drive down costs. We improved safety and closed our gender pay gap. We were named “Responsible Business of the Year” and won an overwhelming parliamentary majority in support of Heathrow expansion. We remain on track to open the new runway in 2026. I am very proud of the outstanding work of 76,000 colleagues across the airport, who are delivering for Britain.”

During 2018 the Britain’s leading airport had record-breaking 80.1 million passengers, which is 2.7% increase as compared to the figures from 2017. At the same time, the airport charges fell 1% to £21.78 and more than 80% of the passengers said they had an “Excellent” or “Very Good” experience at Heathrow.

In addition, Heathrow added six new cities in China, including Europe’s only flight to Shenzhen boosting global trade flowing through the airport to 1.7 million tonnes in 2018.

Furthermore, Heathrow is also growing its domestic connections to 9, including the new services to Newquay that are set to begin in April 2019. The airport has also relaunched the Inverness services connecting UK’s two furthest mainland airports.

Heathrow has also seen its revenues grown by 3% to nearly £3 billion in 2018 on the back of strong retail spend and increased demand to fly. The revenue increase has supported £793 million investment into the airport. The adjusted EBITDA is up 4.4% to £1,837 million while the operating costs per passenger has fallen 2% to £14.14 boosting further the airport’s competitiveness and efficiency.

Heathrow has raised nearly £2.3bn from private investors across seven currencies (up from £1bn in 2017) highlighting the airport’s plans to entirely privately finance expansion and builds the airport’s financial resilience ahead of Brexit thus extending its liquidity horizon to March 2021.

As an update on the airport’s expansion, Heathrow will release the detailed plans in further consultation in June 2019, and is on-track to submit a planning application in 2020 and for the first flights to use the new runway in 2026.

SOURCE: Heathrow