Gatwick sees busiest ever April
Gatwick Airport has achieved its busiest ever April as 3.3 million passengers travelled through the airport, +4% on the previous year.
Transatlantic growth at Gatwick continues apace with May seeing, among the 20 new routes arriving to the airport this year, Canadian airline WestJet launching 28 weekly flights Gatwick to Canada - to be joined by a daily Air Canada Rouge service to Toronto later in May.
The arrival of these two new Canadian airlines to the airport follows the strong performance of North Atlantic routes in April +20% year on year, including New York routes +162% and Los Angeles routes +135%.
Across Gatwick’s destinations, long haul routes continued to perform particularly well +6.0% in April with the month also seeing British Airways start the UK’s only direct routes to Costa Rica and Lima, from Gatwick. This followed holiday destinations performing strongly from the airport with Split, Croatia routes +87%, Valencia routes +48%, Phuket routes +34% and Tenerife +26% as passengers jetted off on Easter holiday breaks.
Domestic routes also performed well this April with Belfast +85%, Newquay +28% and Inverness +21%.
Average load factors were consistently strong at 83%.
Gatwick CEO Stewart Wingate said: “Gatwick’s 28 new flights to Canada from WestJet plus the UK’s only connections to Chinese growth markets Chongqing and Tianjin next month, clearly show that Gatwick can deliver crucial new long-haul routes the UK needs."