London Stansted Airport handles record 30m pax in 2025, record 2.3m pax in Dec-2025

London Stansted Airport reported (12-Jan-2026) it handled more than 30 million passengers in 2025, an increase of 0.9% year-on-year and the first time the airport has achieved the milestone in its history. The airport attributed the performance to route development and seat capacity increases, resulting in a "record 16 days" in which passenger numbers exceeded 100,000. The airport handled 2.3 million passengers in Dec-2025, an increase of 1.6% and a new record for the month of December. The top three destinations to and from London Stansted during the year were Dublin, Istanbul and Edinburgh. Airport MD Gareth Powell stated: "The strong passenger growth during 2025 was driven by many of our airline partners increasing capacity, adding more seats and choice of destinations, particularly Ryanair, Pegasus and Jet2.com - and we're confident we will continue to grow passenger numbers and provide even more choice of airlines and destinations in the year ahead". Mr Powell added: "We were delighted to last month receive the green light to increase our annual passenger limit to 51 million, which paves the way for us to make best use of the existing single runway and grow passenger volumes towards the new limit over the next two decades". [more - original PR] [more - original PR - II]