August, the busiest month for UK aviation travel Since Covid

August is anticipated to be the busiest for UK flight departures since 2019 by aviation data company Cirium.

However, due to numerous short-haul flight cancellations, particularly by easyJet and British Airways, traffic will stay at 80% of August 2019 levels, lower than originally planned.

In order to adhere to a quota on leaving passenger numbers established by Heathrow to minimise inconvenience, BA has halted late reservations of short-haul flights from Heathrow this week and next. BA is planned to fly 75% of its summer 2019 capacity until August.

UK traffic continues to lag behind the worldwide recovery in flight capacity, which is now assessed by OAG, a rival aviation analytics company, to be 86 percent of the 2019 level.

According to Cirium, there will be 83,546 airline departures from UK airports in August, which is an 81 percent increase from August 2021 and amounts to approximately 14.6 million seats.

According to Cirium, it will make August the busiest month for UK aviation travel since October 2019.

The contrast in 2019 is, however, between the busiest month of the year and the last month of summer.

According to Cirum, EasyJet has more than 16,500 flights booked to leave the UK in August, followed by Ryanair with 13,000, BA with 12,100, and Jet2 with 6,000.