• heathrow_17581988126223
    London Heathrow Airport
    IATA/ICAO Code:
    LHR-EGLL
    Country:
    United Kingdom
    CEO:
    John Holland-Kaye
    Passenger Count :
    19,392,178 (2021)
    Runways :
    09L/27R - 3,902m (12,802ft) | 09R/27L - 3,660m (12,008ft)
    Terminals:
    Terminal 2 | Terminal 3 | Terminal 4 | Terminal 5

London Heathrow – the world's leading long-haul airport – to the United States will soon have more nonstop flights than ever before. Looking ahead, the peak will be 119 daily departures throughout next summer, first achieved on May 2nd, based on the latest Cirium data. The current record is 112 daily, last held on July 5th this year.

May 2nd, 2023: 119 daily

Let's look at May 2nd, the first day that 119 daily departures are offered between Heathrow and the US. In contrast, Cirium shows that the other top five airports are Paris CDG with 47 services, Frankfurt with 43, Amsterdam with 36, and Dublin with 22. It means that, on this particular day, Heathrow is responsible for a quarter of all Europe-US nonstop services.

When writing on September 1st, 31 US airports will be served from Heathrow on May 2nd; a breakdown per airline is shown in the following table. Included is Tampa, Heathrow's largest unserved route (technically market), which Virgin will launch this coming winter. It is now known that it'll use its incoming A330neos on the route. It's possible that British Airways will add at least one more US destination next year, while Virgin is to increase Austin to daily next year, but this isn't yet available to book.

While British Airways will always be the market leader, if fellow Atlantic Joint Business partner American Airlines is combined, they together control over half (54.6%) of the market. Between them, they have nonstop flights to 26 US destinations. Meanwhile, joint venture partners Delta Air Lines and Virgin Atlantic have a quarter of services (25.2%) and a US network spanning 14 airports.

London-Heathrow-to-the-USA-1
This image summarizes daily nonstop flight development in a 20-year period. Source of data: Cirium.

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Heathrow-US: a summary

Rank

Airline

US flights: May 2nd

% of market

US routes: May 2nd (flights that day)

1

British Airways

42

35.3%

24: Atlanta (1 daily), Austin (1), Baltimore (1), Boston (3), Chicago (2), Dallas (1), Denver (1), Houston (2), Las Vegas (1), Los Angeles (3), Miami (2), Nashville (1), Newark (3), New Orleans (1), New York JFK (7), Philadelphia (1), Phoenix (1), Pittsburgh (1), Portland (1), San Diego (1), San Francisco (2), San Jose (1), Seattle (2), Washington Dulles (2)

2

American Airlines

23

19.3%

11: Boston (1), Charlotte (2), Chicago (4), Dallas (4), Los Angeles (2), Miami (1), New York JFK (4), Philadelphia (2), Phoenix (1), Raleigh Durham (1), Seattle (1)

3

United Airlines

22

18.5%

8: Boston (1), Chicago (3), Denver (2), Houston (2), Los Angeles (1), Newark (7), San Francisco (3), Washington Dulles (3)

4

Virgin Atlantic

20

16.8%

11: Atlanta (1), Boston (1), Las Vegas (1), Los Angeles (3), Miami (1), New York JFK (6), Orlando (2), San Francisco (2), Seattle (1), Tampa (1), Washington Dulles (1)

5

Delta Air Lines

10

8.4%

7: Atlanta (2), Boston (1), Detroit (2), Minneapolis (1), New York JFK (2), Salt Lake City (1), Seattle (1)

6

JetBlue

2

1.7%

2: Boston (1), New York JFK (1)

JetBlue Airbus A321LR
Photo: James Pearson | Simple Flying

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Up to 16 flights an hour

On this specific May day, the first US departure is at 07:45. In fact, there are two: AA99 to Chicago (B787-9) and UA123 to Washington Dulles (B757-200ER). The last of the day is VS25 at 20:15, bound for JFK (A350-1000).

Between those two extremes, the busiest time is 14:00-14:59, with 16 flights, as shown below. That's equivalent to one US flight less than every four minutes. In this hour, there are two flights to Denver, JFK, San Francisco, and Seattle, and one to Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Miami (the USA's fastest growing major airport), Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Diego.

  1. 07:00-07:59: 2 flights from Heathrow to the US
  2. 08:00-08:59: 6
  3. 09:00-09:59: 10
  4. 10:00-10:59: 13
  5. 11:00-11:59: 13
  6. 12:00-12:59: 12
  7. 13:00-13:59: 10
  8. 14:00-14:59: 16
  9. 15:00-15:59: 8
  10. 16:00-16:59: 14
  11. 17:00-17:59: 6
  12. 18:00-18:59: 4
  13. 19:00-19:59: 3
  14. 20:00-20:59: 2

What other US destinations would you like served from London? Let us know in the comments.