London Gatwick announced two-and-a-half years of consecutive month-on-month traffic growth and achieved its busiest ever July with 4.3 million passengers travelling through the airport, a 6.4% increase on the previous year.
The results put Gatwick ten years ahead of the forecasts by the Airports Commission.
The airport’s long-haul routes were the key drivers of this impressive performance 7% on the previous year.
Destinations contributing to this significant long haul growth include North Atlantic routes +10.1% with New York routes (+116%) and Los Angeles (+106%) largely driven by passenger take up of Norwegian’s low cost long-haul routes.
Long-haul leisure destinations are also performing well with Cape Verde routes (+119%) and Trinidad (+96%). Passenger demand for long-haul routes has also driven a new British Airways non-stop route to Costa Rica to begin at Gatwick from May 2016.
An additional 260,000 passengers travelled through London Gatwick in July compared to the same month in 2014. Passenger growth is the result of more air traffic movements per hour and larger aircraft being used on average across the airlines. Average load factors were consistently strong at 89.5%, +1.3 points on the previous year.
Gatwick CEO Stewart Wingate said:
“Two-and-a-half years of consecutive month-on-month growth shows that Gatwick continues to meet passengers’ needs by providing them with more choice, value and destinations. We are delighted to welcome British Airways’ nonstop flights between Gatwick and San Jose, Costa Rica – the latest addition to Gatwick’s long-haul success story. Flights to long-haul destinations are the fastest growing of the more than 220 destinations that Gatwick flies to today.
“These results put us ten years ahead of the forecasts used by the Airports Commission to predict future air traffic movements. Our growth in the last twelve months is actually more than the Commission concluded could be added at Gatwick in the first year of a new runway being operational here – this is further proof of the flaws in the Airports Commission analysis and shows its conclusions are fast unravelling.”
“Gatwick remains the best solution to solve the UK’s capacity conundrum. Gatwick can deliver the capacity the UK desperately needs and the economic benefit that will bring while limiting the impacts on noise and air quality.”
N.B. Image credit: gatwickairport.com
