Case Study: Heathrow Airport achieves calmer, smoother travel by anticipating passenger flow with Microsoft Power BI

Heathrow prepares rather than reacts uses data to deliver airport calm

Heathrow Airport, the United Kingdom’s gateway handling about 200,000 passengers daily, struggled with unpredictable disruptions—weather, cancelled flights, and sudden passenger surges—that created congestion and stress for travelers and staff. To gain real-time visibility, Heathrow implemented Microsoft Power BI (supported by Azure and PowerApps) to surface operational data from flight schedules, baggage systems, and queues.

Using Microsoft Power BI fed by Azure services (Data Lake Analytics, Stream Analytics, Azure SQL Database), Heathrow delivers dashboards and alerts to some 75,000 employees so they can anticipate events—receiving notifications 1–2 hours before spikes such as 20 delayed flights that would add ~6,000 passengers—and reallocate staff, buses, and concessions. The result is smoother operations, reduced disruption for passengers, and a roadmap to push real-time information directly to travelers via an app.

Heathrow Airport

Stuart Birrell

Chief Information Officer