Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling a little bit late in the day, simply because there's an awful lot going on, as you may have noticed.

Today, I'm going to be talking about two of the stories that have kind of crossed my desk today and how they are related.

It's all to do with airports and airlines, in particular why the slump of Heathrow is a problem

for travellers and the UK aviation industry.

So first of all, one minute to seven today,

just before the Transport Secretary went out to tell everybody

how marvellous the Prime Minister was,

a survey, well, no, a report came in from the Airport Council International, the European

Division in Brussels.

And it basically just said, here's what's happened in terms of airport usage over the past year.

And, well, my headline takeaway is that there used to be four airports in Europe.

They were in order.

Heathrow, Paris, Charles de Gaulle, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

And they were just the top four.

And Heathrow was always, always top dog.

Well, now, Amsterdam and Paris are still in the top four.

They've both slipped down a place, but in the top position is Istanbul, followed by Domo Jeddahva in Moscow,

and the Russian capital even had the temerity to have another airport

Cheromietjevo in the top five. So things have moved very, very substantially. If you look at

Spain, for instance, they managed last year 44% of the flights they had in 2019, the UK managed 22%.

And even though there are signs of recovery, the travel restrictions that the government in the UK chose to put in place, I think, have damaged the country's airports permanently to the extent that Heathrow,

I predict, will never ever regain top spot in Europe. It's lost that crown to Istanbul.

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