# London Heathrow Airport (LHR)

> London, GB · IATA: LHR · ICAO: EGLL · Large Airport · Cargo Hub

## Quick Facts

| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| IATA | `LHR` |
| ICAO | `EGLL` |
| City | London |
| Country | GB |
| Type | Large Airport |
| Elevation | 25 m |
| Cargo | ✅ |
| Cargo Rank | #1 |
| GPS | 51.47060, -0.46194 |

## Description

London Heathrow (LHR/EGLL) is the United Kingdom's largest air cargo gateway by a wide margin, handling roughly 1.55 million tonnes in 2025 — more than every other UK airport combined — yet it does so almost without freighter aircraft. Night-flight restrictions and a saturated two-runway slot pool push the great majority of shipments into the bellyholds of passenger widebodies, a structural difference that anyone planning charter or main-deck loads needs to understand early. Ground handling is concentrated in the southern cargo estate, where Worldwide Flight Services alone operates some 44,000 m² across eight facilities and moves over 350,000 tonnes a year for around a dozen carriers, with a purpose-built warehouse adding more than 160,000 tonnes of annual throughput from 2027. By value the airport carried about £293 billion of goods in 2025, over a quarter of all UK trade, dominated by pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and electronics, aerospace spares, perishables and high-value consumer goods. Post-Brexit customs clearance runs through CDS declarations and, for accompanied road movements, the GVMS system; most non-UK exporters appoint a British customs agent rather than filing themselves. Landside, Heathrow is a road operation: the M4 and M25 meet at its perimeter, and a large share of tonnage arrives by trucked road feeder service from Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Brussels and Paris rather than by air. Shippers needing scheduled main-deck capacity usually route via London Stansted, the FedEx and UPS base, or East Midlands (EMA), the UK's dedicated express freight airport. The pending third-runway scheme, submitted in 2025 at around £49 billion and adopted by government as the preferred basis for review, would expand cargo facilities by roughly 50% but still awaits a parliamentary decision on the Airports National Policy Statement.

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*Freight Academy — Airport Profile: [https://www.freight-academy.com/en/information/airports/london-heathrow-airport-lhr](https://www.freight-academy.com/en/information/airports/london-heathrow-airport-lhr)*

*Markdown mirror: [https://www.freight-academy.com/api/md/airports/en/london-heathrow-airport-lhr](https://www.freight-academy.com/api/md/airports/en/london-heathrow-airport-lhr)*

*LLM-Summary (JSON): https://www.freight-academy.com/api/v1/airports/london-heathrow-airport-lhr/llm-summary*