Heathrow

Heathrow Airport opened in 1946 and soon took over from Croydon as the main international airport for London and the UK. Originally having six runways, in three pairs of two, these were reduced to the current two runways as the airport expanded and needed to be able to support modern larger aircraft. There are proposals to add a third runway parallel to the current two. The airport had five terminals after the opening of Terminal 5 in 2008. In 2015, however, Terminal 1 was closed to allow expansion of Terminal 2.

Heathrow is the eighth busiest airport in the world in terms of passenger numbers and handles over 80 million passengers a year.