The boss of Heathrow today warned that price cap plans could jeopardise passenger improvements at the London hub.
Chief executive Colin Matthews issued the caution while revealing a 4.6% rise in passengers in June to 6.5 million over the same month last year.
“We want to continue to invest in improving the passenger experience, but the Civil Aviation Authority’s initial price cap proposals put that in doubt,” he said.
“International shareholders will only invest if the return is fair and competitive with other opportunities around the world.”
Heathrow highlighted the planned opening of the new Terminal 2: The Queen’s Terminal on June 4 next year as representing a £2.5 billion private sector investment in infrastructure which will have supported 35,000 jobs across the country by the time it is operational.
“Terminal 2 represents the latest chapter in Heathrow’s on-going transformation following £11 billion of investment since 2003.” Matthews said.
The figures for June brings the number of passengers using Heathrow to more than 34 million in the first six months of 2013, a 2.4% increase over the same period last year.
European traffic increased by 6.6%, including double digit growth in Italy (18.7%), Norway (21.5%), France (13.7%) and Holland (11.7%).
East Asia and South America saw increases of 11.6% and 12.9% respectively.
Traffic to and from the BRIC economies was up 8.7%, with growth for China (24.6%) and India (8.7%).
The average number of passengers on each flight last month rose to 164.2, pushing load factors to 81%, up 0.7 percentage points on June 2012. The average number of seats per aircraft was up 2.8% to 202.7.