Figures show impact of lockdown on Leeds Bradford Airport as no flights take off for whole week

Analysis by the BBC Shared Data Unit found that nine in 10 flights have been grounded across the UK since the strict government restrictions were introduced.

Using data from flight tracking website Flightradar24, the analysis found that last week (April 13-19), no flights took off from Leeds Bradford Airport.

This is a dramatic drop from the 127 flights that took off from the airport in the week before lockdown began (March 16-22).

In total just 711 departures were recorded from the UK's 10 biggest airports last week, compared with 7,865 in the week up to the UK's lockdown.

Some airports told the BBC they were still running a few repatriation flights for the Foreign Office but that many planes were actually cargo and freight journeys.

When a passenger aircraft is used to carry cargo, most of the seats can be covered with netting, so that supplies can travel in the cabin as well as in the belly of the plane.

Normally, most of the world's air cargo is transported in the hold of passenger aircraft.

But with the majority of airliners grounded, cargo companies have had to step up their operations in an effort to meet the demand to ferry into the UK such cargo as medical supplies, component parts for projects to manufacture respirators and personal protective equipment (PPE) in recent days.

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