Gatwick Airport borrows extra £75m from government due to pandemic January 24, 2021 Gatwick Airport has borrowed an extra £75m from the government to bolster its finances due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic on the travel sector. The airport has reportedly borrowed £250m so far under the Covid Corporate Financing Scheme, after being forced to keep applying for new funds due to lockdowns and restrictions on [...]
Campaign groups hit out at ‘callous’ Gatwick second runway plan January 4, 2021 Local campaign groups have hit out at Gatwick Airport’s decision to turn its emergency runway into a routinely operating second runway, calling the move “callous”. Yesterday it emerged that the Sussex airport’s investors – French giant Vinci and infrastructure fund GIP – had committed to funding the expansion, which would add 90 flights a day. [...]
Gatwick Airport demand takes off after quarantine rule change November 27, 2020 Gatwick Airport is preparing to ramp up flights after the government said quarantine rules will be relaxed in the run-up to Christmas. Chief executive Stewart Wingate said the airport had already seen boosted demand and was expecting to handle around 100 flights per day by mid-December. This is compared to just four a day during [...]
What’s in store for the airline industry this winter? October 30, 2020 Although every industry has suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic, few have been as hard hit as the world’s airlines. At the beginning of the year, the idea of a world without global air travel was for most people a relic of a long-forgotten past, but seven months of extreme turbulence have flipped that notion [...]
The government must adopt airport testing to help rebuild the economy October 2, 2020 Last month, the Prime Minister announced new curbs to control the rising number of coronavirus cases for at least six months – and the prospect of tighter restrictions or a second lockdown still looms large. The outcry was predictable: the measures are confusing, sometimes contradictory, and of course, there are concerns about the impact on [...]
The travel industry will not survive without a radical U-turn August 27, 2020 The UK has a rich history as a global transport hub. While we all value our holidays as individuals, the value of travel to the UK economy cannot be overlooked. In 2019, the 40.9m overseas visitors who came to the UK spent £28.4bn. While many of us don’t consider the UK economy to be as [...]
Gatwick Airport says passenger numbers will take up to four years to recover April 24, 2020 Gatwick Airport said today that it would take three to four years for passenger numbers to recover to pre-coronavirus levels. Before the coronavirus decimated global air traffic, the UK’s second-busiest airport had seen passenger numbers rise to 37m in the nine months ending in December 2019. Subsequently, Gatwick has been forced to take dramatic steps [...]
Revealed: Gatwick airport to lose 600,000 passengers because of Thomas Cook collapse November 26, 2019 Gatwick airport is set to lose more than half-a-million passengers this financial year because of the collapse of Thomas Cook. The UK’s second-biggest airport held a significant number of the airline’s take-off and landing slots before it folded in September and sparked the repatriation of 150,000 Brits who were left stranded abroad. Read more: General [...]
Gatwick enjoys strong summer of retail profit despite modest passenger growth November 26, 2019 Gatwick enjoyed rising profit in the first half of the financial year on the back of strong retail trading at the airport, despite modest passenger growth. In terms of traffic, the UK’s second-biggest airport felt the impact of a tricky economic climate for the aviation industry, with 26.6m passengers passing through the gates, just a [...]
Gatwick airport trials speedy plane boarding method in bid to cut queues October 30, 2019 Long queues to board passenger flights could soon be a thing of the past, if new methods being trialled at Gatwick are successful. Britain’s second-biggest airport is working with Easyjet on plans to get passengers on planes more efficiently. Read more: After Gatwick, how do we prevent future drone chaos? Screens at boarding gate 101 [...]