London City saw 4.8 million passengers arrive or depart last year, a record high for the 31-year-old airport.

It represented 6.4 per cent year-on-year growth, which the airport said was partly driven by British Airways’ subsidiary BA CityFlyer, which added 10 per cent more flights over the year, including to Rome Fiumicino.

London City also saw an increase in leisure travel, with its top 20 routes including tourist hotspots like Florence, Ibiza, Malaga and Mallorca.

Overall the airport was actually used by fewer aircraft, but many of those that did fly had greater capacity.

A rise in passenger numbers will likely be reflected at London’s other airports when they release their figures for 2018, with most seeing record-breaking months during the year.

Heathrow saw more than six million passengers in November for the first time.

Stansted, Gatwick and Luton also both said they had their busiest-ever Novembers.

At London City, the most popular routes were Amsterdam (621,803 passengers), Edinburgh (494,776) and Dublin (480,890).

The biggest year-on-year growers were the Belfast City route operated by Flybe (up 52.5 per cent) and the Milan Linate route operated by BA and Alitalia (up 46.5 per cent).

The airport is currently undertaking a £500m terminal expansion and development project to allow it to handle an extra two million passengers per year, due for completion in 2022.

It is expecting five million passengers in 2019.

londoncityairport.com