Airlines add frequencies to London City

LONDON - New routes, additional frequencies and larger aircraft take London City Airport to new heights. Over five million passengers travelled through the central air link last year, making 2019 the busiest year in the airport`s history. An ongoing expansion plan will add capacity to the slot-constrained field.

Publishing its official annual passenger figures, Londons most central airport announced that a total of 5,100,025 passengers flew in to and out of the airport in 2019.

The figure is a year-on-year increase of 6.3 percent which has been driven by the launch of new routes combined with additional flights and larger aircraft with more seats on existing routes.

"2019 was a very successful year for London City Airport, with increased demand from passengers and airlines, the launch of new routes and expansion of others," said airport chief commercial officer Robert Hill.

The most popular LCY route remained Amsterdam, with a total of 664,621 passengers travelling between the Dutch capital and London City Airport in 2019, representing an increase of 6.9 percent on the previous year. Edinburgh (511,116) and Dublin (460,132) continue to be the second and third most popular routes respectively.

2025 expansion

Based on the latest Civil Aviation Authority data, leisure passengers account for 55 percent of people travelling to and from the airport. This would amount to 2,828,374 passengers in 2019. The launch of LOT Polish Airline’s routes to Budapest, Vilnius and Warsaw brought an additional 194,000 passengers through the airport.

British Airways subsidiary, BA CityFlyer, continued to drive growth as the airport’s largest airline partner with an additional 195,000 passengers generated through additional aircraft and improved load factors, the launch of its Munich route and increased operations to Rome (FCO), Zurich and Edinburgh.

Additional flights by Dutch flag-carrier KLM, the launch of Air Antwerp`s new service with a KLM codeshare, and Flybe`s deployment of larger aircraft on some Edinburgh and Belfast flights, "also generated extra seats and passengers," according to airport officials.

London City Airport started an expansion plan that will improve air traffic movements from 38 to 45 movements per hour and enable increased annual passenger movements to 6.5 million passengers by 2025.