Gatwick Airport

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

London Gatwick Airport is one of several international airports serving Greater London and southern England. It is located in Crawley, in West Sussex, 30 mi south of Central London, England. In 2024, Gatwick was the second-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the UK, after Heathrow, and was the tenth-busiest in Europe by total passenger traffic. It covers a total area of 674 ha.

Gatwick opened as an aerodrome in the late 1920s; it has been in use for commercial flights since 1933. The airport has two terminals: the North Terminal and the South Terminal, which cover areas of 98000 m2 and 160000 m2 respectively. It operates as a single-runway airport, using a main runway with a length of 3316 m. A secondary runway is available but, due to its proximity to the main runway, can only be used if the main runway is not in use. In 2018, 46.1million passengers passed through the airport, a 1.1% increase compared with 2017. Gatwick is the secondary London hub for British Airways and the largest operating base for low-cost carrier easyJet.

History

Early years

The land on which Gatwick Airport stands was first developed as an aerodrome in the late 1920s. The Air Ministry approved commercial flights from the site in 1933 and the first terminal, The Beehive, was built in 1935. Scheduled air services from the new terminal began the following year. During the Second World War, the airport was taken over by the military and was known as RAF Gatwick. After the war, the airport returned to its civilian capacity. The airport proper was built in the mid-1950s opening in 1956. The airport buildings were designed by Yorke Rosenberg Mardall between 1955 and 1988.

In the 1960s, British United Airways (BUA) and Dan-Air were two of the largest British independent airlines at Gatwick, with the former establishing itself as the dominant scheduled operator at the airport as well as providing a significant number of the airport's non-scheduled services and the latter becoming its leading provider of inclusive tour charter services. Further rapid growth of charter flights at Gatwick was encouraged by the Ministry of Aviation, which instructed airlines to move regular charter flights from Heathrow. Following the takeover of BUA by Caledonian Airways at the beginning of the following decade, the resulting airline, British Caledonian (BCal), became Gatwick's dominant scheduled airline during the 1970s. While continuing to dominate scheduled operations at Gatwick for most of the 1980s, BCal was also one of the airport's major charter airlines until the end of the 1970s (together with Dan-Air, Laker Airways and British Airtours).

As a result of conditions imposed by Britain's Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the takeover of BCal by the then newly privatised British Airways (BA) at the end of the 1980s, Dan-Air and Air Europe assumed BCal's former role as Gatwick's dominant scheduled short-haul operator while BA continued in BCal's erstwhile role as the airport's most important scheduled long-haul operator. Following the demise of Air Europe and Dan-Air (both of which had continued to provide a significant number of charter flights in addition to a growing number of scheduled short-haul flights at Gatwick) in the early 1990s, BA (having purchased Dan-Air) began building up Gatwick into a secondary hub (complementing its main hub at Heathrow). These moves resulted in BA becoming Gatwick's dominant airline by the turn of the millennium. BA's subsequent decision to de-hub Gatwick provided the space for easyJet to establish its biggest base at the airport and become its dominant airline.

Transatlantic flights to the United States

From 1978 to 2008, many flights to and from the United States used Gatwick because of restrictions on the use of Heathrow implemented in the Bermuda II Agreement between the UK and the US. The EU–US Open Skies Agreement, which became effective on 30 March 2008, led several airlines to downsize their transatlantic operations at Gatwick in favour of Heathrow. Continental Airlines was the second transatlantic carrier (after American Airlines) to leave Gatwick after it decided to transfer the seasonal Cleveland service to Heathrow on 3 May 2009.

US Airways, Gatwick's last remaining US carrier, ended its service between Gatwick and Charlotte on 30 March 2013. This left Gatwick without a scheduled US airline for the first time in 35 years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Delta Air Lines announced its intent to launch service between Gatwick and Boston in the summer of 2020, which would have made it the first US airline to service Gatwick since the withdrawal of the US Airways service in 2013, but the massive global travel downturn placed these plans on indefinite hold. In 2021, JetBlue became the first US airline to serve Gatwick since 2013, with services to New York–JFK and Boston.

Development since the 2000s

On 17 September 2008, BAA announced it would sell Gatwick after the Competition Commission published a report about BAA's market dominance in London and the South East. On 21 October 2009, it was announced that an agreement had been reached to sell Gatwick to a consortium led by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), which subsequently also bought Edinburgh Airport in 2012, for £1.51billion. The sale was completed on 3 December. In February 2010, GIP sold minority stakes in the airport of 12% and 15% to the South Korean National Pension Service and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) for £100million and £125million, respectively. The sales were part of GIP's strategy to syndicate the equity portion of the original acquisition by issuing bonds to refinance bank debt. Although this entails bringing additional investors into the airport, GIP aims to retain management control.

The Californian state pension fund CalPERS acquired a 12.7% stake in Gatwick Airport for about US$155million (£104.8million) in June 2010. On 21 December 2010, the A$69billion (£44billion) Future Fund, a sovereign wealth fund established by the Australian government in 2006, agreed to purchase a 17.2% stake in Gatwick Airport from GIP for £145million. This transaction completed GIP's syndication process for the airport, reducing its stake to 42% (although the firm's extra voting rights meant it still controlled the airport's board).In August 2020, the airport announced plans to cut over a quarter of its employees as a result of a planned company restructuring caused by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The planned cuts will bring the total workforce of the airport to 1,900; before the start of the pandemic it was 3,300, however, an additional 785 jobs were cut earlier in 2020. In August 2021, it was reported that Gatwick's operators were in talks with lenders following posting first-half-year net losses of £ 245m.

Corporate affairs

Ownership

The former BAA Limited (now Heathrow Airport Holdings) and its predecessors, BAA plc and the British Airports Authority, owned and operated Gatwick from 1 April 1966 to 2 December 2009. The airport is owned and operated by Gatwick Airport Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ivy Holdco Limited, owned by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), itself owned by BlackRock. In December 2018, Vinci announced that it would acquire a 50.01% majority stake for £2.9bn, with a GIP-managed consortium of investors (Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Australia's sovereign wealth fund and two public pension funds in California and South Korea) owning the remaining 49.9%. The sale was completed by the middle of 2019.

Leadership

In September 2023, Baroness Ford was announced as the new chair of Gatwick Airport.

Operations

Facilities

On 31 May 2008, Virgin Holidays opened the V Room, Gatwick's first lounge dedicated to their long-haul leisure travellers. On 25 January 2017, the lounge moved to the North Terminal together with the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse as part of the airline moves that saw British Airways and Virgin Atlantic exchange their previous terminal locations and easyJet consolidated in the North Terminal. On 9 April 2009, an independent pay-for-access lounge opened in the South Terminal. Gatwick also has a conference and business centre, and several on- and off-site hotels ranging in class from executive to economy.

The airport has Anglican, Catholic and Free Church chaplains, and there are multi-faith prayer and counselling rooms in each terminal. A daily service is led by one of the chaplains.

The Civil Aviation Authority Safety Regulation Group is in Aviation House. WesternGeco, a geophysical services company, has its head office and Europe–Africa–Russia offices in Schlumberger House, a 124000 sqft building on the airport grounds near the South Terminal. The company had a 15-year lease on the building, scheduled to expire in June 2008. In 2007, WesternGeco reached an agreement with its landlord, BAA Lynton, extending its lease to 2016 at an initial rent of £2.1million. Fastjet has its registered and head offices at Suite 2C in First Point at the airport.

Before the sale, BAA planned an £874million investment at Gatwick over five years, including increased capacity for both terminals, improvements to the transport interchange and a new baggage system for the South Terminal. Passengers passing through the airport are informed about the redevelopment programme with large mobile barcodes on top of construction hoardings. Scanning these transfers information on the construction to the user's smartphone.

In the summer of 2013, Gatwick introduced Gatwick Connect, a free flight connection service to assist passengers changing flights at Gatwick whose airlines do not provide a full flight connection service. On 15 September 2015, the service was rebranded as GatwickConnects. It is available to passengers connecting on several major airlines.

Flight movements

Gatwick operates as a single-runway airport although it has two runways; the northern runway (08L/26R) can only be used when the main runway (08R/26L) is out of use. The UK Integrated Aeronautical Information Package gives the Takeoff Run Available (TORA) of its main runway (08R/26L) as 3,255 m when aircraft take off in a westerly direction (26) and 3,159 m when takeoffs occur in an easterly direction (08). The documentation lists the respective TORA for the northern runway (08L/26R) as 2,565 m in both directions. Nearly three-quarters of takeoffs are towards the west (74% over 12 months). Both runways are 148 ft wide; they are 656 ft apart, which is insufficient for the simultaneous use of both runways. During normal operations the northern runway is used as a taxiway, consistent with its original construction (although it was gradually widened).

In October 2018, the airport announced that it was "exploring how to make best use of its existing runways, including the possibility of bringing its existing standby runway into routine use". One scenario would see 08L/26R used for departing narrow-body aircraft only, while the longer 08R/26L would be used for wide-body take-offs and all landings; widening 08L/26R would also increase the centreline separation slightly. New technology could also be used to increase capacity on the main runway, and, in the longer term, the airport remains interested in constructing a new runway to the south.

In 2023, plans were announced to expand the second runway and make it operational for regular use.

The main runway uses a Category III Instrument Landing System (ILS). The northern runway does not have an ILS; when it is in use, arriving aircraft are radar vectored to intercept an RNAV (GNSS) approach, providing the aircraft is equipped and the operator has approval. This approach is satellite-based and is also available for the main runway. When an RNAV approach is not possible, assistance from the approach controller using surveillance radar, an "SRA approach" is available. This involves heading instructions and altitude callouts supplied by the Air Traffic Controller. On both runways, a continuous descent approach is used to minimise the environmental effects of incoming aircraft, particularly at night.

Night flights are subject to restrictions; between 11 pm and 7 am, noisier aircraft (rated QC/8 and QC/16) may not operate. From 11.30 pm to 6 am (the night quota period) there are three limits: Number of flights, a Quota Count system, limiting total noise permitted and no night QC/4 flights.

In late 2020, Gatwick introduced the "Airline Noise Performance Table" (ANPT), quarterly and annually published tables that score the busiest airlines at the airport based on their performance for three environmental benchmarks. The table covers noise Quota Count (QC) per seat, Continuous Descent Approach (CDA) performance and departure track-keeping (TK) performance relative to the Noise Preferential Routes (NPRs). QC per seat is a calculated value, whereas CDA and track-keeping performance are measured results and show % compliance. TK violations on Lambourne departures from Runway 26 (Route 4) are disregarded for the purpose of ANPT statistics. The airlines featured in each quarterly and annual report are ranked from best to worse for each of the three benchmarks based on the scores achieved. In 2025, while continuing to publish the quarterly and annual reports as documents, Gatwick introduced an interactive ANPT dashboard on its website. This replicates the static reports, but with the addition of a new “Final rank” column, the derivation and significance of which is not explained.

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Gatwick Airport” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.