London Gatwick recorded two-and-a-half years of consecutive month-on-month traffic growth and achieved its busiest ever July with 4.3 million passengers travelling through the airport, a 6.4% increase on the previous year. The airport’s long-haul routes were the key drivers of this impressive performance 7% on the previous year.
Destinations contributing to this significant long haul growth include North Atlantic routes +10.1% with New York routes (+116%) and Los Angeles (+106%) largely driven by passenger take up of Norwegian’s low cost long-haul routes.
Long-haul leisure destinations are also performing well with Cape Verde routes (+119%) and Trinidad (+96%). Passenger demand for long-haul routes has also driven a new British Airways non-stop route to Costa Rica to begin at Gatwick from May 2016.
An additional 260,000 passengers travelled through London Gatwick in July compared to the same month in 2014. Passenger growth is the result of more air traffic movements per hour and larger aircraft being used on average across the airlines. Average load factors were consistently strong at 89.5%, +1.3 points on the previous year.
