Heathrow airport handled 126,264 tonnes of cargo in August, a month that included the London gateway’s busiest-ever day for passengers, with 262,000 handled on the fourth.

However, cargo traffic for the month was down 9.9% on the same month in 2018 and 5.3% on a year to date basis, at 1.063 million tonnes for the first eight months of 2019.

A total of 7.7 million passengers travelled through the capacity constrained hub airport in August, up 0.1% on last year.

The top markets for cargo growth were Africa (+4.2%) and the Middle East (+1.8%), the airport said.