London Gatwick is my local airport, so it was with some degree of excitement that I made my way to the ‘staff only’ floors of the South Terminal. The airport equivalent of Platform 9¾ for Harry Potter fans who also read Airports International.
I began by asking chief executive officer Stewart Wingate about the challenges facing the sector and their impact on the airport. Rather than dwell on the negatives, Wingate was quick to outline the progress Gatwick has made.
He told me: “We've now had two years of re-establishing our business in a very successful way, I would argue, following the [COVID-19] pandemic. Obviously, the pandemic was very, very painful for us. But when we look at both 2022 and 2023, I think we have bounced back very strongly indeed.”
Wingate notes that airports’ success tends to be judged on passenger volumes. Just under 41 million passengers travelled through Gatwick in 2023, he says, representing 88% of the 2019 (pre-pandemic) total, adding, “This reflects a lot of hard work, not only by the airport staff, but by the whole community. It was [a case of] the airlines, the airport, retail and ground handling staff all pulling together to be able to operate a single runway airport at that sort of intensity.”
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