Gatwick Airport broke a series of records in August 2014, with the airport having its busiest month in its entire history with 4.362 million people choosing to fly through it on leisure and business trips.

This was 8.2 per cent up on August 2013, representing an additional 330,300 passengers.

The airport also handled the take-off and landing of 906 planes in a single day on August 29th, making it by far the most efficiently operated single runway airport in the world.

San Diego Airport – the second busiest single runway airport in the world – manages on average 500 movements per day, with a record of around 700 in a single day.

Over the summer, business and leisure traffic to Europe continued to perform strongly.

Popular business routes included Geneva, which was up 16.8 per cent, while routes to emerging economies, such as Turkey, also grew with pace. Passengers travelling to Istanbul Ataturk, the city’s main airport, were up 34.8 per cent year-on-year.

Travel further afield grew to both the east and west in August.

The launch of Norwegian’s new low-cost long-haul flights to New York and Los Angeles have proved popular with passengers and have helped bolster traffic to the North Atlantic by 3.8 per cent.

There was also a 14 per cent increase year-on-year for Other Long Haul, which was mainly due to uplift in travel to Dubai.

Stewart Wingate, chief executive of London Gatwick, said: “Passenger numbers at Gatwick are rapidly increasing and this growth is only expected to continue as we compete for new airlines and open new routes, such as Garuda operating a Gatwick-Jakarta route in September.

“Airports and airlines competing for traffic are delivering tangible benefits for passengers.

“This is most notably demonstrated by the increasing demand to fly with Norwegian Air on their affordable flights to New York and Los Angeles.

“The popularity of the routes has seen Norwegian Air announce that it will be doubling the frequency of those flights next year.

“Building a second runway at Gatwick will promote even greater competition among airports and airlines, delivering reduced fares, better services and more choice for passengers.

“Building a third runway at Heathrow will diminish the choice available to British passengers, making it more expensive to go on holiday, to travel for business and to export goods and services.”