Short answers, pulled from the story.
Heathrow handled 83.9 million passengers in 2024, its busiest year on record. In 2025 it ranked as the fifth-busiest airport in the world by total passenger traffic and the second-busiest by international passenger traffic.
Heathrow Airport opened on the 25th of March 1946 under the name London Airport. It was renamed Heathrow Airport in the last week of September 1966 to avoid confusion with Gatwick and Stansted airports.
Heathrow has four operational passenger terminals, numbered 2 to 5, plus one cargo terminal. Terminal 1 closed on the 29th of June 2015 and its site is being used to extend Terminal 2.
The Brink's-Mat robbery took place on the 26th of November 1983, when thieves stole 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million from a vault near Heathrow Airport. Only a small amount of the gold was ever recovered and only two men were convicted of the crime.
Opposition to a third runway has centred on greenhouse gas emissions, noise, and the impact on surrounding communities. The Court of Appeal ruled a 2016 approval illegal in February 2020 because the plans did not adequately account for the government's Paris climate agreement commitments, though the Supreme Court overturned that ruling in December 2020.
The busiest international route from Heathrow is to New York JFK, which carried 3,220,238 passengers in the year to 2025. Dubai was the second-busiest destination with 2,539,936 passengers over the same period.