Stansted Airport’s busiest-ever November has helped push its annual passenger total to another all-time high.

Stansted Airport’s busiest-ever November has helped push its annual passenger total to another all-time high.

More than 1.74m people passed through the main terminal at Stansted last month, in increase of 2.3% compared with November last year.

This took the rolling annual total for the year to the end of November to more than 24.171m, an increase of 7.8% on the previous 12 months and nearly 40,000 up on the annual record established in October, which topped the previous high reached nine years ago.

Passenger growth was again driven by record high load factors – the propotion of seats filled on each flight – with planes operating at an average 87.3% of capacity, another record for the month of November at Stansted.

The volume of cargo handled at Stansted also continued its upward trend with nearly 23,000 tonnes of goods passing through the airport’s specialist facilities, up 4.3% on November 2015, with the annual total now standing at just over 252,000 tonnes, an increase of 7.0% year-on-year.

Stansted Airport chief executive Andrew Cowan, said: “The first full month of the airline’s winter flight schedules produced another solid performance in terms of passenger growth and the busiest November for the airport on record.

“Strong average load factors continue to drive the increase in passenger volumes while the airport’s significant and high-value cargo operation also recorded another positive month of growth.”

Last month’s continued growth means that Stansted is also well on track for a new calendar year passenger record, with the total for the first 11 months of 2016 now within 1.32m of the current full-year high of just under 23.78m, also set in 2007.