Charles de Gaulle overtakes Heathrow as Europe’s busiest airport

Heathrow airport has been overtaken by Charles de Gaulle in Paris as the busiest in Europe, with passenger numbers down almost 80% and losses of GBP1.5b for the year so far. Charles de Gaulle had 19.3m passengers between January and the end of September, about 300,000 more than Heathrow, according to the London airport’s latest figures.  Heathrow also said it expected significantly fewer passengers this year and next than it had forecast during the summer, after a recovery in global travel failed to materialise. In June, it said it expected 29.2m passengers in total for 2020 and 62.8m in 2021. It has now revised these figures down to 22.6m and 37.1m respectively. In 2019, 81m passengers passed through Heathrow. CE John Holland-Kaye warned on Wednesday after Heathrow published its latest results that Britain was “falling behind” other European countries in reopening its borders and said the government had been too slow to introduce coronavirus testing at airports. “We are just going to be taken to the cleaners by the French and other European countries,” he said. Heathrow has led industry pressure on the government throughout the crisis, and Holland-Kaye has been one of the most outspoken critics of the UK’s response to the pandemic. “There seems to be a blind spot in government that the French do not have” over the economic importance of aviation, he said. “Paris has overtaken Heathrow as Europe’s largest airport for the first time ever, and Frankfurt and Amsterdam are quickly gaining ground,” he added.<br/>