When BAA sold Gatwick at the end of last year, everyone wondered what the future would hold. Mike Luddy, the airport's chief commercial officer, tells Gary Noakes of the positive plans for change.
The management suite high above the runway at Gatwick has only one senior occupant left from the previous BAA administration: its chief commercial officer, Mike Luddy.
In December, Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), owners of London City Airport, paid £1.51 billion for Gatwick after the former owners were ordered to dispose of it by the Competition Commission. Luddy, the airport's commercial director under BAA, had only joined Gatwick in 2007 after overseeing the redevelopment of St Pancras International Station and was not as much a BAA man as his fellow directors, who all left immediately.
Luddy originally worked at Gatwick in the 1990s, when it was dominated by charter flights. Today, it is very different, with 47 per cent of traffic being low-cost, 35 per cent scheduled and 18 per cent charter. Gatwick has also lost its old role as a Heathrow overspill for US carriers, which have now either quit or moved most of their routes to London's main hub.
Luddy is quick to discount suggestions that Gatwick has become a bucket-and-spade airport again.
"I don't think it has gone back to its roots. Low-cost has gone from being 23 per cent of traffic to 47 per cent in four years, but a high proportion of that is business travellers that are not travelling Business Class. British Airways also has a relatively large business following from Gatwick."
He does, however, concede that Gatwick will never be a hub - an ambition for the airport that its previous owners and BA, which in the 1990s operated a raft of long-haul business routes from Gatwick, once held.
"What BAA failed to appreciate was that to be a hub with connecting traffic is something you can't do with only one runway," says Luddy. "What you can offer is better fares and a service that is more courteous and friendly."
Under GIP, he has already begun projects to woo business travellers. The Fast Track security channel, something he invented in the 1990s, will no longer be open to anyone in a floodgate manner when the security lanes become busy.
A dedicated Fast Track lane is being built near to the current entrance to the South Terminal departure lounge, but the most radical step will come in June 2011, when the rather pointless Gatwick Village landside shopping mall will close and become a single, much enlarged security channel for all Economy passengers upstairs from check-in, replacing the current three separate lanes.
All this is part of a £40 million redevelopment plan.
Luddy says BAA had treated Gatwick "like its problem middle child" with funds poured into Heathrow's T5 instead. "With GIP we have the opportunity to be truly creative."
An example of this creativity is a project with Emirates, whereby First Class passengers can use the airport's VIP suite. Kerb-side check-in for business passengers and a service where duty-free is brought to your seat in the lounge is also under consideration.
"Emirates is a great case in point - we can react far more quickly to its needs than perhaps Heathrow could," says Luddy. "What we are looking at is how can we differentiate the service we give - what sort of car parking, what type of check-in?"
The latter is another gripe among regular travellers, now that queues for check-in have disappeared only to become queues for the bag drop instead. Luddy's Check-in Lab is in Gatwick's South Terminal, where a completely self-service process is being trialled that allows passengers to print their baggage labels as well as their boarding passes for the first time, the former being something that the Department for Transport has until now forbidden for security reasons.
This, says Luddy, means passengers do not have to go to another desk after using the self-service machine, only to be asked the same security questions they have already dealt with. The new pod-style desks will deal with the problem of excess baggage by the simple means of a chip-and-pin credit card swipe.
As for destinations, the emphasis is now on replacing some of the long-haul services lost, rather than attracting more low-cost flights with relatively small aircraft and focusing on passenger numbers.
Luddy's goal is to grow long-haul by 72 per cent by 2017. Gatwick has introduced an incentive giving 50 per cent off fees and charges for the first year, 30 per cent off in the second year and 15 per cent in the third. Among carriers being courted is Vietnam Airlines, but will this be enough to prompt the return of the likes of American Airlines?
"We have to be realistic as far as some of the US airlines are concerned," Luddy says. "Gatwick will be an overspill for Heathrow, but all the US carriers are holding on to their slots here and having them sat by other airlines, so there is a strong likelihood they will return because Heathrow is practically full."
The single runway is a handicap and Gatwick will not be expanded for decades, if at all, but Luddy is keen to maximise its use with more movements per hour and larger aircraft. Some peak time morning arrival slots held back by the airport are being waived for potential new entrants.
This is Luddy's trump card. "When the US traffic left, we held on to the 5am landing slots," he says. "Contrary to belief, the Far East carriers want to come in first thing - and Heathrow has no peak time slots left."
- Mike Luddy had various roles with BAA during the late 1980s. In the '90s he was appointed head of marketing at Gatwick Airport, leaving in 1996 to become commercial director for Bristol International Airport and subsequently commercial director for Newcastle International Airport. From 2004 to 2008 Luddy was project director for St Pancras International - London and Continental Railways (LCR) - prior to returning to Gatwick as chief commercial officer.