Reference: FOI-2024-1877
You asked
What estimate has been made, for the purposes of compiling the International Passenger Survey or other compilations, about the number of entries into the UK via Farnborough Airport for the last 3 years for which estimates are available and can you give me an explanation of the basis for these estimates?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The International Passenger Survey samples passengers at the main airports in the UK. These include Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester as well as a large number of smaller airports. Unfortunately, Farnborough airport is too small for us to include and therefore, we do not hold the data you have requested.
As a result, passengers travelling through Farnborough airport are not included in the ONS published estimates. Our published estimates include all visits to and from the UK based on the total number of passengers at UK airports supplied to us by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). An uplift to all sampled airports is used to represent all unsampled airports to ensure the total estimates are for all passengers entering or leaving the UK. There are no plans to include any estimates for small airports in the UK.
The CAA have started to receive passenger totals and these are shown in their January data which you can find here: UK airport data January 2024 | Civil Aviation Authority (caa.co.uk). Table 9 shows there were only 2,376 passengers in January. This is the total number, and it is not split to show if these are arrivals or departures. If you have any queries about this data, please contact CAA directly.