Ahead of the August bank holiday weekend, airports across the United Kingdom are likely to see their busiest activity day in four years as record flights to take off for various destinations, including Spain and Portugal.

Roads, railways, ports and airports across the United Kingdom likely to register one of their busiest days ever as a record number of British holiday-makers venture to take advantage of the August bank holiday weekend. 

While road traffic observers predict 14 million drivers are set to be behind the wheels this weekend, aviation data aggregators, too, are forecasting one of the busiest days at airports across the country today.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium says reports show more than 3,130 flights are scheduled set to take off from UK airports on Friday, the highest number on a single day since October 2019.

Cirium says that numbers are expected to increase even further over the coming week, with 11,839 flights, with over 2.1 million seats, scheduled to take off. This is up 10 pc compared with the same period last year, and up 83 pc compared compared with 2021. Scheduled departures across the weekend are set to reach 90 pc of 2019 pre-Covid levels.

According to Cirium, Heathrow will see the largest number of departures, followed by Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and Edinburgh. Low-cost carrier EasyJet is projected to be the airline operating most flights this week, followed by British Airways and Ryanair.

Most of the travellers are headed to short-haul destinations in Europe, with Portugal and Spain amongst the key beneficiaries as a number of flights are headed towards Malaga, Palma and Faro. Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Dublin in Ireland are also amongst the biggest beneficiaries of the travel boom.