Friday set to be busiest day of year for flight departures

This Friday (July 18) is set to be the busiest day for UK flight departures so far this year, with more than 3,244 departures, according to new data.

The weekend will see 9,256 flights scheduled to leave airports around the UK for the start of the peak summer holiday period - equating to nearly 1.7 million seats.

Scheduled departures are up 2% year-on-year and are expected to reach 95% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels, aviation analytics firm Cirium found.

While UK departure numbers sit below 2019 levels, there are 40,000 more available seats from UK airports over the three days due to larger aircraft being used compared to the same weekend in 2019.

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

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

EasyJet is likely to operate the largest number of UK departures this weekend, followed by British Airways, Ryanair, Jet2.com and Tui Airways.

Spain is the top destination this July, with flight levels up 6% year-on-year to 15,693, followed by Italy, up 6% to 5,477 and Greece, up 3% to 5,250 in the month.

Malta is showing the highest proportion growth of 20% to 622 flights, followed by Morocco, up 17% to 756 and Canada, up 11% to 843.

The US has remained static over last July with 4,640 flights, while Cyprus, the Netherlands and France has all seen declines of between 2% and 3%.