London Heathrow Airport recorded its busiest ever month during July, according to the latest figures released by operator BAA.

Some 6.7 million people made a journey through the airport during the month - 3.5 per cent more than last year.

Sunday, July 18th was Heathrow’s busiest ever day, with 232,000 passengers passing through the airport.

The number of people travelling through BAA’s UK airports increased by 0.3 per cent to 10.9 million in July the Spanish-owned organisation confirmed in monthly figures.

Across BAA – which also operates Stansted, Glasgow and Southampton airports - the fastest growing market in July was Europe, with an increase of 2.9 per cent combining both charter and scheduled flights. 

Long-haul traffic was up by 0.5 per cent, but domestic traffic was 4.6 per cent lower than last year.

The main source of passenger growth at Heathrow was the European market, where additional capacity fuelled an increase of 9.5 per cent.

At Stansted, a near eight per cent drop in seats offered produced a similar drop of 7.2 per cent in passengers, while in Scotland additional capacity helped to produce an overall increase of 6.6 per cent in passengers travelling to and from Europe.

At the operator’s individual airports, Aberdeen’s traffic fell by 4.1 per cent, Edinburgh grew by 0.6 per cent and Glasgow recorded a drop of 3.6 per cent.

Southampton’s July numbers were down 1.4 per cent, while in Italy traffic at Naples increased by 6.1 per cent in the month.