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UK Civil Aviation Regulations

These are published by the CAA on our UK Regulations pages. EU Regulations and EASA Access Guides published by EASA no longer apply in the UK. Our website and publications are being reviewed to update all references. Any references to EU law and EASA Access guides should be disregarded and where applicable the equivalent UK versions referred to instead.



The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has introduced a new published report detailing load factors at UK Airports. This report shows the capacity being utilised on passenger flights each quarter and is being published to meet the growing interest for this type of information.

20 October 2022: January 2019 to June 2022 files have been republished to exclude a small number flights identified as non-commercial movements.

28 April 2023: The following files have been republished - London Area Apts 2022 Q3, Other Reporting Apts 2022 Q2 and Other Reporting Apts 2022 Q3. This is due to Birmingham and Luton data updated to exclude flights identified as non-commercial movements.

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

Further information

Data notes:


  1. A quarter is a three-month period aggregated as follows:
    •  Quarter 1 = January to March
    • Quarter 2 = April to June
    • Quarter 3 = July to September
    • Quarter 4 = October to December
  2. Percentage of load factor is calculated by dividing the sum of passengers on board the aircraft (terminal and transit passengers) by the aircraft seats available.
  3. For the purpose of this analysis, flights where the aircraft’s available seats have not been provided by the airport are excluded.
  4. The aircraft origin/destination represents the final point on the service. An aircraft serving more than one point on the route is therefore shown once only in this table.
  5. Flights carrying Passengers and Passenger Cargo Mix services are included. All Cargo Only services are excluded from this analysis.
  6. ‘United Kingdom’ includes services where the final point of the service is in the UK, Channel Islands (Alderney, Guernsey, and Jersey) or the Isle of Man. Flights between any two of the reporting airports (e.g. Heathrow-Manchester) are included in both airports’ figures.
  7. Flights operating to and from an Oil Rig or Gas Platforms are included but shown separately as ‘Oil Rigs’.
  8. This analysis includes Scheduled and Charter flights. Government Charter services are excluded.
  9. With the exception of Oil Rig flights, Charter flights operated on an aircraft with fewer than 20 seats are excluded.
  10. Air Taxi, Local, Private, Military, and other non-air transport movements are excluded from the analysis.
  11. The table excludes data for operators for whom we do not have consent to publish.
  12. Whilst the information in this analysis relate to Air Transport Movements, there may be instances of Non-Commercial movements reported in the data supplied by UK Airports and included in this analysis. This may include repatriation and medical emergency flights.

The CAA collects statistics from more than 60 UK Airports. Information is supplied on each individual air transport flight.

From the individual flight records it is possible to build up pictures of the activity at each reporting airport. In addition the traffic and capacity on each route to/from the airport can be assessed.

The information contained in these reports has been compiled from various sources of data. CAA validates this data, however, no warranty is given as to its accuracy, integrity or reliability. CAA cannot accept liability for any financial loss caused by a person’s reliance on any of these statistics. No statistical data provided by CAA maybe sold on to a third party. CAA insists that they are referenced in any publication that makes reference to CAA Statistics.

Close Data notes:

How to contact us



If you have feedback on our published reports please contact Aviation.Intelligence@caa.co.uk. You will receive an automated reply confirming that we have received your comments.

We review every comment that we receive and, if significant issues are found with our published reporting, reports will be amended and re-published. Unfortunately, we are unable to respond to individual queries. We reserve the right to correct any published figure accordingly.

Historic along with more detailed information is available by emailing AvStatsDataRequest@caa.co.uk. Further information on bespoke analysis can be found here https://www.caa.co.uk/data-and-analysis/uk-aviation-market/bespoke-data-analysis/

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