London Stansted opens 2023 with strongest performance since pandemic

Passengers in the London Stansted Airport terminal.
Photo Credit: London Stansted Airport
Lewis Chesworth 4 Min Read
4 Min Read

LONDON – London Stansted Airport has reported its opening figures for 2023 during January and stats are more than positive for the Essex airport.

The figures released by the airport this week show that Stansted served 1.82 million passengers in January, which equates to 94% of pre-pandemic levels (1.9 million passengers were served in January 2019).

This figure is also the highest percentage achieved since the lifting of travel restrictions last year, which can be seen as a no brainer to many.

In comparison to 2022 figures, Stansted reported that the 1.82 million passenger statistic for January is a staggering 173% increase when looking back at January 2022.

The other statistics


Outside of the passenger statistics, Stansted was pleased to announce increases in figures across all areas of the business reporting that there were 6,914 departing flights throughout January 2023.

On top of this, Stansted said 99% of passengers made it through security in 15 minutes or less, which considering were talking about London’s third busiest airport, this is impressive.

Lastly, Stansted was also happy to announce that 766 new colleagues had joined their workforce ready for the summer, in a bid to build back stronger from the staff shortage issues faced nation-wide last summer season.

Commenting on the figures, Gareth Powell, Managing Director for London Stansted said: “I’m really pleased the team here at London Stansted.”

“They delivered yet another strong passenger performance in January, achieving 94% of passenger volumes for the same month pre-pandemic, and building on the positive growth we experienced last year after travel restrictions were lifted.”

“Im equally delighted we continue to provide a smooth and efficient security operation for our passengers, which we aim to maintain as we welcome many more passengers this week as they head off on half-term breaks, and as we build up to the peak summer months”.

“To meet rising passenger demand, we are recruiting even more colleagues to join our teams, as are many of our business partners across the airport.”

“Last week’s job fair proved to be a huge success, attracting hundreds of eager job seekers, so our plans to offer the best passenger experience and service as we continue to bounce back are well on-track”.

In review


To sum up Stansted’s incredibly positive statistics for January 2023:

Image Credit: Stansted Airport

Overall, the airport has seen a continued improvement in its statistics, especially after reporting a successful 2022, with over 24.4 million passengers passing through. This represents a huge 217% increase on 2021’s passenger figures.

Based off this, it certainly seems Stansted is likely already on track to surpass their 2022 full year passenger numbers and edge ever closer and possibly over the mark of their 2019 passenger figures, which topped out at 28.12 million.

Furthermore, it seems clear that this will be the case as airlines are looking to help Stansted out with growing such figures, with new carriers joining the pile to add to the ever growing list of available list of destinations.

One example being Wideroe, who recently made the decision to move its London operations out of Heathrow into Stansted, making the Norwegian Fjords more accessible to those in the Essex county and surrounding regions.

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