It is the beginning of what is expected to be one of the busiest summers in UK aviation’s history and Gatwick is booming.
Up to 850 takeoffs and landings occur at the East Sussex hub each day. Drive down one of its two colossal runways, and you’ll see a constant flow of planes taxiing back and forth, accompanied by hundreds of support vehicles weaving across the tarmac.
What many people don’t know is that Britain’s second-biggest airport, behind only Heathrow in the size and scale of its operations, is in the middle of a period of significant post-pandemic change that could see it close in on its age-old London rival.
Take a £2.2bn plot to dramatically increase capacity by bringing its emergency runway into routine use, multi-million-pound investments in its infrastructure, or an increasing push to muscle in on the long-haul market.
Gatwick Airport’s airfield in 2021.
Veteran chief executive Stewart Wingate is spearheading the recovery and is blunt about the coming months. “We are going to have a very, very busy year,” he tells City A.M. from his office overlooking the airport.
It marks a stark shift from the days of Covid-19, when passenger numbers were wiped out during lockdown and one of Gatwick’s longest-serving customers, Virgin Atlantic, walked out.
Wingate describes it as “undoubtedly the most challenging period” in his career, yet traffic has soared back since mid-2022 as consumers nourish a pent-up desire for holidays following years of travel restrictions. Some 43.5m passengers are forecast to fly through Gatwick this year, putting traffic at around 95 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
Summer disruption
That means more hours in the office for Wingate, but the 52-year-old isn’t fussed about the challenge. He says the airport is “geared up” to operate with top service levels despite the numbers. “We’ve had a very good performance so far this year [and] we think that will continue.”
Given the disruption that has plagued UK aviation over the last two years, it’s a confident statement.
Staff shortages in the post-Covid ramp-up caused carnage at the height of summer in 2022 and last year, an unprecedented meltdown at the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (NATs) in August caused hours of delays and thousands of cancellations.
The problems were felt hardest at Gatwick. It was criticized for further disruption through Autumn due to staffing issues at its NATs-operated air traffic control tower caused, in part, by a number of employees taking long-term medical leave.
Wingate said he’d been working personally with the air traffic body’s under-fire chief executive, Martin Rolfe, to make sure the ATC tower could meet demand. “We’ve had bi-weekly calls right the way through the winter where we’ve been tracking their progress [and]… the amount of resilience they’ve got in the tower,” he told City A.M.
“Certainly, so far this year, they’ve done that very well, and we are not expecting them to have problems similar to what they had in September.” Staff rosters have returned to stronger levels, and Nats has “brought a cohort” of trainees through the training programme since September, he added.
Aside from preventing another summer of travel carnage, the airport’s top priority is how to tap into the booming demand for holidays and turn those extra flights into profit.
Long-haul flights
One of Gatwick’s key points of focus has been tapping into the long-haul market, traditionally dominated by rival Heathrow. The airport has signed a string of deals over the last year with carriers, including Singapore and Ethiopia Airlines, and brought in new routes to the likes of India, China and Africa.
According to Wingate, short-haul business has all but recovered from the pandemic, but “the area we’ve really been focusing on in terms of growing our demand is our long haul destinations.”
“It’s a very lucrative business,” he explains. Long-haul carriers are less impacted by seasonal demand fluctuations, and their passengers have a “high propensity to actually shop and spend money in the terminals as they travel through the airport.”
Gatwick boss Stewart Wingate on the airport’s expansion
“It’s a very lucrative business,” he explains. Long-haul carriers are less impacted by seasonal demand fluctuations, and their passengers have a “high propensity to actually shop and spend money in the terminals as they travel through the airport.”
Aviation enthusiasts will have one thing on their mind, though: could Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic finally return?
The billionaire business magnate has hinted at a possible comeback to the airline’s original base in recent months, and speculation has been fuelled by doubts over the future of Heathrow’s third runway plans. Wingate’s message is clear:
“One thing is for certain from the airport point of view, from Gatwick’s point of view, what we’ve said to Virgin from the moment they took the decision to consolidate into Heathrow is at the earliest opportunity come back, you’ll be very welcome.” Talks are ongoing, he added.
But does the airport even need Branson back? In March, Gatwick reported a record £314.8m profit in its full-year results (Heathrow narrowly scraped a profit), after signing up a number of new airlines and investing heavily in its infrastructure over the past year.
The return of Virgin would undoubtedly be a big boost, but may hinge on the future of Gatwick’s own expansion plans. A £2.2bn plot to bring its emergency runway into routine use would effectively grant the hub a second major runway.
But it awaits approval from the Planning Inspectorate and ahead of a general election and amid scrutiny from MPs and campaigners, there is no guarantee it will go through.