Passenger numbers at Gatwick airport soared to 19 million during the first six months of the year, according to its operator, although air traffic control strikes across Europe contributed to an increase in delayed departures and landings.
Demand for travel resulted in 41% more passengers travelling through the airport between January and June compared with 2022 – when Covid restrictions were still in place – Gatwick said as it released half-year results.
The airport reported a net profit of £79m for the first six months of the year, a 56% increase compared with the same period in 2022.
However, the results, which do not include the impact from the failure of the UK’s air traffic control system on Monday, show flights remained at 86% of their pre-pandemic level.
Gatwick said the number and punctuality had been affected by strike action at airports across Europe. Strikes by air traffic control managers have also restricted routes and forced airlines to divert to longer flight paths, with France particularly affected.
Gatwick’s biggest airline, easyJet, cancelled 1,700 summer flights primarily from the Sussex airport in an attempt to try to limit the disruption from strikes.
Stewart Wingate, the chief executive officer of Gatwick, said the airport had worked to “provide passengers with a good level of service, despite a challenging operational environment across much of Europe”.
The airport said it was working with airlines and ground handlers to try to ensure aircraft were ready to leave for the first wave of departures early in the morning.
Wingate said it would “continue working closely with our airport partners to improve punctuality … and set us up in good stead for next year”.
The airport said it had recruited an extra 200 security officers in the run-up to the peak summer period, allowing 98% of passengers to get through security in less than five minutes.
Wingate, who said it had been a “very challenging week”, with the air traffic failure causing hundreds of cancellations and long delays at Gatwick, added: “One of the things that encourages us is the recovery of our long-haul network – we’ve now got 50 long-haul destinations on sale. We’ve laid out our six-year investment plan, which is over £2bn between now and 2029. And then we have had our northern runway plans not only submitted but now accepted to move forward to the examination phase.”
Gatwick hopes to bring its standby northern runway into routine use to help expand capacity to 75 million passengers a year. The transport secretary will decide late next year whether the runway can go ahead, based on the planning inspectors’ recommendation. Local groups and campaigners say it will vastly increase noise and pollution.
