News

Friday will be ‘busiest day’ for flight departures since October 2019

Friday (July 19) is set to be the busiest day for UK flight departures so far this year, as schools in England break up for the summer holidays.

There will be more than 3,200 departures on Friday, the highest number of daily departures since October 2019, according to research from aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Over the course of tomorrow and the weekend (July 19-21), 9,075 flights are scheduled to depart UK airports, equating to more than 1.6 million seats.


More: European flight cancellations soar by 46% in June

Bad weather and air traffic control restrictions ‘disrupts flights for 10,000 passengers’


Compared to the same weekend in 2023, scheduled departures are up 4% year-on-year.

Scheduled departures across the weekend are also set to reach 93% of 2019 levels.

While UK departure numbers sit below 2019 levels, there are over 2,500 more available seats from UK airports over the three days, compared to the same weekend in 2019, because larger aircraft being used, said Cirium.

Heathrow is set to record the highest number of departures, followed by Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and Edinburgh.

The most popular international destinations for UK travellers are projected to be Dublin, Amsterdam, Palma, Alicante and Malaga.

EasyJet is expected to operate most UK departures this weekend, followed by Ryanair, British Airways, Jet2.com and Tui.

Pictured: Manchester airport

Share article

View Comments

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.