EXPANSION PLANS

Gatwick wants to expand and has gone head-to-head with Heathrow in bidding for an additional runway to boost UK airport capacity.

Stewart Wingate reports that Gatwick added 21 slots last year, making 900 take-offs and landings on peak days. “We plan at 55 movements per hour but can actually cope with 60,” he says, adding that he expects passenger volumes to reach 38 million this year (up from 31 million in 2010).

Gatwick serves more than 200 destinations, including 12 domestic and 40 long-haul, with Easyjet flying to more than 100.

“We have worked hard to look at emerging economies such as Turkey, Indonesia and Vietnam,” Wingate says. Turkish Airlines now flies four times a day to Istanbul, Vietnam Airlines operates four-times weekly to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and Garuda Indonesia launched five flights a week to Jakarta via Amsterdam last month. Easyjet added twice-daily flights to Moscow in March. At the same time, the airport has lost a couple of medium-haul routes – BA dropped Tunis last October, while this year Easyjet dropped Amman.

Following a short-lived Air Asia X service to Kuala Lumpur in 2011-12, low-cost has again gone long-haul. In July, Norwegian started direct flights to New York JFK, Los Angeles and Fort Lauderdale on its new wifi-equipped B787s, for prices as low as £300 return including taxes. Next May it will double the JFK frequency from three- to sixtimes weekly, and the LAX service from two to four times a week.

Wingate says: “Heathrow can’t offer cheap fares to New York, for example, as its airport charges are already the highest in the world. Our charges are at a level where the legacy, the low-cost and the charter carriers can prosper. Our average charge is £9 per passenger, whereas Heathrow’s is £22.

“With a second runway, our charges would go to about £12-£15. The alternative would be that Heathrow gets the third runway at a cost of £18 billion and charges would increase to about £40 per passenger.”

He adds: “Our scheme would cost about £7.8 billion and see us grow to a passenger volume of 95 million annually. This would be more than Heathrow [72.3 million in 2013] because our runways could be operated in mixed mode [meaning planes could both land and take off on them].

“Ours would also be five years quicker to deliver – by 2025 – and would only affect 5 per cent of the people Heathrow affects with aircraft noise.”

gatwickairport.com