London Stansted ended 2017 on a high having announced that Emirates will open a direct service from the Essex-based hub to Dubai in June 2018.
The airport also marked 2017 as its busiest year to date with 25.9 million passengers travelling through the airport, marking an increase of 1.57 million passengers (6.5%) over the previous 12 months.
The airport’s record-breaking achievement was credited to the addition of 11 new routes across the year, bringing the total number of destinations served from Stansted up to 190 across 38 countries. Apart from Munich, the airport also serves more scheduled connections to Europe than any other airport in the world.
“The last year has been a very busy and exciting time at London Stansted with passenger numbers and the range of destinations directly available from the airport both reaching all-time highs.
“The positive passenger growth was driven by increased choice from many of our airline partners, particularly Ryanair who experienced another strong year, and the very successful opening of Jet2.com’s first base in the south of England back in March,” said Stansted Airport CEO, Ken O’Toole.
Explaining that the new direct service to Dubai in June 2018 would also provide onward access to a wide range of destinations around the world including Shanghai, Sydney and Hong Kong, O’Toole added that Emirates’ “excellent addition to our route network comes on top of the very exciting news that Primera Air will also launch direct flights to New York, Boston and Toronto from April and May this year.”
O’Toole also confirmed that work is now underway on phase one of the airport’s £500million airport tran
sformation project.
“It’s imperative that we plan how we can keep pace with demand and invest in developing quality, good value facilities” he said, referencing that the multi-million-pound investment will add more check-in desks, extra seating and more car park spaces.
He also added that: “we will shortly submit a planning application to make best use of our existing runway capacity within current environmental limits to improve UK connectivity and support national and regional economic growth.”
