Record-breaking traffic to and from North America helped London Heathrow to achieve its busiest ever month in July.

The UK hub airport catered for 7.981 million passengers last month, which beat the previous monthly record set in July 2024 by around 1,000 passengers.

While Heathrow¡¯s overall passenger numbers were broadly flat year-on-year, traffic to and from North America rose by 0.9 per cent to 2.1 million passengers in July ¨C a new monthly record to the key region.

This increase was helped by a 2.1 per cent year-on-year increase in the number of flights between Heathrow and North America, with nearly 8,500 total services operating during July ¨C up from 8,275 flights in July 2024.

¡°This growth was boosted by increased demand around US Independence Day on 4 July, with a fortnight of elevated traffic both before and after the celebration period,¡± said the airport in a statement.

Despite the new record, traffic was down year-on-year from Heathrow to most global regions in July, which was mainly due to a reduced number of flights, with non-EU European routes (-2.7 per cent) and the Middle East (-2.3 per cent) seeing the largest drops in passengers.

Although there was a small increase of 0.3 per cent to EU destinations and a 5.2 per cent in passengers flying to and from African destinations in July.

Heathrow added that it had experienced its busiest ever day on 1 August with nearly 271,000 passengers using the airport on that day. Although this was not high enough to reclaim the European daily passenger record from IGA Istanbul Airport.

The airport also said it had recorded its seventh consecutive month as Europe¡¯s most punctual hub ¨C ahead of key rivals such as Amsterdam Schiphol, Frankfurt, Madrid and Paris Charles de Gaulle.

Last month, Heathrow outlined its proposal to build a third runway to the UK government, which forms part of a larger ?49 billion plan to expand the airport¡¯s infrastructure over the next 10 years.

Heathrow¡¯s CEO Thomas Woldbye added:?"We continue to break records as Europe's largest and most punctual hub - adding value for our airline partners and passengers. To build on this success, we¡¯ve set out a 100 per cent privately financed plan to expand Heathrow.¡±