Published on : Monday, February 10, 2014
London Gatwick saw 2.2 million passengers use the airport in January 2014 – an increase of 6.6%, or 138,300 passengers, over the prior year.
Travel to Europe saw the largest growth with over 1.4 million passengers flying to popular European destinations – an increase of 8.0% on the prior year. The majority of this growth was on flights to key business routes with destinations as diverse as Stockholm, Istanbul, Moscow and Copenhagen. This was tempered by fewer passengers on charter flights to European leisure destinations, reflecting the longer-term market move towards scheduled, low cost airlines.
Other long haul growth was up 11.3%, mainly as a result of increases on leisure routes such as Thailand and Sri Lanka. This was complemented by growth on long haul business routes such as Dubai.
The reported loss of traffic to North America, down 13.4%, was mainly due to US Airways ceasing services from London Gatwick earlier in 2013. This summer’s launch of three new Norwegian routes to the US (New York, Los Angeles and Florida) will help reverse the trend of lower traffic to this region.
For domestic traffic, increases on the Belfast, Glasgow and Isle of Man routes were offset by the withdrawal of the Manchester route.
Load factors – showing how full the average flight was – were at 75.2%, in line with the prior year. Nick Dunn, Chief Financial Officer at London Gatwick said, “We saw steady growth to Europe in January, which is by far the dominant market for business and leisure passengers travelling from London and the South East.
“Alongside European growth however, we continue to see strong performance in long haul travel, particularly on established routes to the Middle East, Far East and the Indian Sub-Continent.
“Next month we will be welcoming Emirates’ daily A380 services to Dubai and Air China’s flights to Beijing to further strengthen these routes and provide even greater choice and convenience for passengers.”
Source: London Gatwick
Tags: Airline News, Airports in London, Gatwick, london airport, London Gatwick traffic
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