UK Airport Passenger Traffic, May 2026: Regions Lead the Growth as Gatwick Slips

The Civil Aviation Authority has published its passenger figures for May 2026, and they confirm what the live boards have been hinting at all spring: UK aviation is still growing, but the growth is no longer being led by London. The busiest month of the pre-summer season saw strong year-on-year gains at Scotland's biggest airport and across the regions, while London Gatwick continued a quiet decline that now stretches across a full rolling year.

The numbers below use the CAA's official monthly returns. Where we quote an annual figure we use the rolling twelve months to the end of May 2026, which is the fairest way to compare one airport against another without a single quiet month distorting the picture. You can see the full breakdown for any airport on its own statistics page, linked throughout.

The UK's Busiest Airports

London Heathrow remains in a league of its own, handling just under 84.7 million passengers across the rolling year, up 0.8 per cent. It is still comfortably larger than the next three airports combined. Heathrow alone moved more than 7.1 million passengers in the month of May.

Behind it, the order is familiar but the direction of travel is not. London Gatwick holds second place at 42.1 million, but it is the only large UK airport going backwards, down 3.1 per cent year on year. Manchester is third at 32.2 million and growing at 2.3 per cent, and London Stansted is fourth at 30.0 million, essentially flat at plus 0.5 per cent.

The top ten is completed by London Luton (18.0 million, up 4.2 per cent), Edinburgh (17.3 million, up 7.2 per cent), Birmingham (13.8 million, up 4.4 per cent), Bristol (11.0 million, up 2.0 per cent), Glasgow (8.3 million) and Belfast International (6.7 million).

Where Growth Is Really Happening

Strip out the sheer scale of Heathrow and a clear pattern emerges: the fastest growth is in the regions and in Scotland, not in the South East.

Edinburgh is the standout among the majors, up 7.2 per cent over the year to become the UK's sixth busiest airport. Just behind it on percentage terms, Newcastle grew 7.3 per cent and Liverpool John Lennon 7.2 per cent, both now handling around 5.7 million passengers a year.

The two biggest percentage risers of all are smaller airports that have added routes rapidly. Bournemouth is up an extraordinary 21.4 per cent to 1.4 million passengers, and Cardiff is up 13.5 per cent to just over 1.0 million. For airports of that size, double-digit growth reflects a handful of new based aircraft or routes rather than a broad trend, but it is a genuine turnaround for two airports that have had difficult recent years.

Gatwick Is the Exception

London Gatwick is the one large airport moving the wrong way. Its rolling annual total has slipped 3.1 per cent to 42.1 million. A single month does not explain a full year of decline, and the fall is worth watching over the summer to see whether it is a genuine structural shift or simply the airport lapping an unusually strong previous year. Everything else in the top ten is either flat or growing.

Among the smaller airports there are steeper percentage falls, but on tiny numbers. Wick, Sumburgh, Benbecula and Newquay all recorded year-on-year declines, which for airports handling a few hundred thousand passengers or fewer usually comes down to a single route or a change of operator rather than any wider signal.

Which Airports Cancel the Most Flights?

The CAA also publishes movement data, which lets us work out the share of scheduled flights that were cancelled at each airport in May. This is one of the most useful numbers for passengers, and it does not always follow size.

London City had the highest cancellation rate of any major UK airport in May, at 1.45 per cent of movements, followed by Heathrow at 1.23 per cent. Both are constrained, slot-heavy airports where a single disruption ripples through the day, so this is not a surprise. Glasgow (0.77 per cent) and Birmingham (0.64 per cent) came next among the larger airports.

At the other end, Leeds Bradford had a remarkable month, cancelling just one flight in more than 3,500 movements, a rate of 0.03 per cent. Belfast International (0.13 per cent), Stansted and Luton (both 0.18 per cent) also ran very cleanly. The big low-cost bases tend to have the most resilient operations, because their point-to-point networks are easier to recover than a complex hub.

These are monthly averages. If you want to see how a particular airport is performing right now, our live cancellation trackers update through the day, for example Heathrow cancelled flights today, Gatwick cancelled flights today and Manchester cancelled flights today, alongside a longer running record on each airport's cancellation statistics page.

What It Means for Summer

The headline is a healthy one for the industry. Total UK passenger numbers are still rising, the regional airports are carrying more of that growth than in previous years, and cancellation rates at most airports are low going into the busiest months. The two things worth keeping an eye on are Gatwick's continued softness and whether the fast-growing regional airports can hold their new routes through the winter.

We will publish an updated version of this analysis each month as the CAA releases new data. In the meantime, every UK airport with official figures now has its own passenger statistics page showing annual passengers, UK ranking, monthly traffic and cancellation rate, with a comparison against the rest of the country.

Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) airport data, May 2026. Figures are Crown copyright and are reproduced here with attribution. Annual figures are the rolling twelve months to the end of May 2026.