London Gatwick airport has seen its recovery from the pandemic “accelerate” in recent months with traffic climbing back to 74.3 per cent of pre-Covid levels in the first half of 2022.
Gatwick catered for 13.1 million passengers between January and June, compared with just 570,000 travellers during the first half of 2021.
The airport also returned to profitability during the half-year as it made an operating profit of £66.4 million, compared with a loss of £137 million during the first six months of 2021. Revenue rose from £42.3 million to £291.5 million over the same period.
Gatwick said its recovery had been fuelled by “strong passenger demand and encouraging air traffic volumes” following the lifting of all UK travel restrictions in March.
Stewart Wingate, Gatwick’s CEO, said: “We still have some way to go, but strong demand has fast-tracked Gatwick’s recovery from the pandemic, particularly in the last quarter since all UK travel restrictions were removed.
“Air traffic volumes have reflected this strong passenger demand and have bounced back to around 75 per cent of pre-Covid levels.”
The airport is now forecasting that it will cater for 32.8 million passengers during 2022 due to increased demand. As a comparison, Gatwick handled 46.6 million passengers in 2019 and only 6.3 million people in 2021.
Although it admitted that this prediction may be affected by “macro-economic uncertainty”, including the impact of inflation on costs and passenger demand.
Gatwick added that it did not intend to continue the current daily cap on the number of flights (850 in August) at the airport beyond the end of this month, unlike Heathrow which has now extended its own capacity cap until 29 October.
“The unprecedented growth in traffic led to short-term operational issues in June, however our decisive early action to limit the airport’s capacity in the crucial school holiday period of July and August has ensured passengers have experienced reliable flight timetables over the summer months,” added Wingate.
“We are now very much operating business as usual and do not see any reason to extend the capacity declaration.”
The airport has benefited from the announcement of 40 new routes, including Norse Atlantic’s services to New York, Bamboo flying to Hanoi, British Airways to Cape Town and JetBlue adding a daily flight to Boston.