Gatwick has seen strong growth in passenger numbers between April and September this year, the London airport has announced.
There has been an 8.5 per cent increase in passenger traffic through Gatwick, with existing carriers introducing new routes to the airport.
British Airways, easyJet and Norwegian have all added new routes to their existing service from Gatwick.
“The six months between April and September has seen strong passenger growth for Gatwick, with an 8.5 per cent increase in traffic,” said Stewart Wingate, Chief Executive Officer of Gatwick Airport.
“Even allowing for factors such as ash that affected all major airports across Europe in the summer months in the prior period we saw underlying growth of 3.3 per cent.”
Gatwick has been investing heavily in its infrastructure, implementing a £1.2 billion investment programme.
The airport recently opened its new-look North Terminal. The £73 million renovated terminal will be able to handle an extra four million passengers per year.
Mr Wingate added: “We continued to implement our £1.2 billion investment programme during this period, investing in excess of £20 million each month to deliver improved facilities for our passengers and airlines.”
“The ‘front door’ to the North Terminal is now more spacious and modern with more self service check-in options.”
Several airlines have announced recently that they will commence flights from Gatwick, including Lufthansa and Turkish Airlines.
“We are very happy to start flying from London Gatwick to more than 190 destinations around the world from 20 December,” said Faruk Cizmecioglu, Chief Marketing Officer of Turkish Airlines.
As it expands, Gatwick is aiming to become the Asian gateway for London and the UK. Asian carriers AirAsia, Hong Kong Airlines and Vietnam Airlines have all announced new routes to the airport.
Commenting on the announcement of Hong Kong Airlines’ new service, Guy Stephenson, Gatwick’s Chief Commercial Officer, said: “This is a unique service which provides a real choice to business and premium leisure traffic to one of the world’s great cities, with excellent connections to other points in Asia.”
