Just before Christmas, the UK's Transport Secretary announced that a decision on where to build a new runway in the South East of Britain would be delayed. Patrick McLoughlin said that the Government accepted the case for expansion of capacity in the South East.
"Heathrow is full. Gatwick is filling up. If no action is taken the entire London system will be full by 2040. And yet we need new connections to new cities in new economies," he said.
The final report of the Davies Commission recommended a new runway at Heathrow to the northwest of the existing airport, although it also looked at two other options: an extended northern runway at Heathrow and a second runway at Gatwick.
However, delaying the decision until summer, McLoughlin said that the Government needed to carry out further work to look at air quality, noise, carbon emissions and the effects on local communities of the three options in the Davies report.
Despite the delay, McLoughlin said that the timetable for the new runway — expected to come into service in 2030 — would not slip.
Our charts this week look at the destinations currently served by the two airports during the most recent month for which statistics are available. The larger the dot on the map, the more passengers are headed to that destination. The most popular destinations — JFK and Dubai from Heathrow, Dublin and Amsterdam from Gatwick — are shown in purple.
Heathrow destinations
Gatwick destinations
The most obvious difference between the two maps is that Gatwick's users are largely headed for Europe and the Caribbean. Heathrow's users also travel to Europe but their destinations are much more geographically spread, with many high traffic destinations in Asia.
That said, the existing travel patterns should not necessarily be used as a reason to preclude expansion at one airport or the other: a new runway at Gatwick could see its distribution of flights change dramatically and deliver the other benefits — or fewer disadvantages — than a new one at Heathrow.
There is a remarkable even distribution of routes. The data show that Heathrow served 167 destinations and Gatwick 159 during November. However, traffic at Heathrow is more than double that at Gatwick. The most popular destination from Gatwick would only be number 10 on the Heathrow chart.