Gatwick UK’s fastest growing airport
14.03.08
Gatwick Airport had the biggest increase in passengers of any UK airport last year, according to a report by the the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The number of passengers using the airport rose by one million to 35.2 million, almost double the 513,000 added at Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport.
The number of travellers using UK airports increased by 2.4 percent, the slowest rise in the last decade. A total of 241 million passengers passed through their terminals in 2007.
Heathrow, Gatwick and three other London airports – Stansted, Luton and London City – handled 58 percent of all UK flights last year, down from 58.2 percent in 2006. The number of passengers travelling to the capital's air terminals rose by 2.8 million in the year, 2 percent more than in 2006.
The use of regional airports rose by 2.9 percent, handling 101 million passengers in 2007, after rising by 4.0 percent in 2006. Manchester Airport experienced the biggest decline in travellers. The UK's fourth largest airport handled 21.9 million passengers last year, 232,039 fewer than in 2006.
More regional airports are developing a greater range of services and there are now nine airports handling more than five million passengers each year between them, accounting for nearly one third of all UK passengers, while a further nine airports each handle more than one million passengers annually.
Aircraft movements (landings and take-offs) also rose by 1.8 percent to 2.5 million. London City Airport saw the highest rate of growth in terms of movements 15.9 percent up. The docklands airport enjoyed its fourth consecutive year of double-digit percentage growth and is now handling over 2 percent of all London passengers.
The largest increases were in passengers to and from Poland (up by 30.7 percent), Italy (up by 6 percent), and Spain (1.8 percent). The largest fall was Ireland, where passenger numbers fell by 0.1 million (a decrease of 0.8 percent) - a contrast with high growth in 2006, when Ireland showed a 4.8 percent increase.
Europe being the continent that was most flown to in 2007 (139.0 million passengers, an increase of 3.1percent from 2006). There were 22.4 million passengers on flights to and from North America, an increase from 21.7 million in 2006, and a reversal of the decline in passengers to and from North America seen in 2006.
Outside of Europe and North America, the Middle East and Australasia were the regions seeing the largest growth in passenger numbers (0.6 million and 0.2 million respectively). Both of these represent increases of more than 10 percent since 2006. Between them, these two regions account for nearly a quarter of the passengers between the UK and the non-EU countries excluding North America.
25.3 million passengers were on domestic flights. This represents a fall of 1.9% on 2006, and is the only market segment where passenger numbers are not increasing.
121.3 million passengers at UK airports travelled on UK scheduled airlines. This was just over half of all the passengers at UK airports and slightly higher than the 2006 proportion - 50.4 percent compared to 50.1 percent. Of the remaining scheduled passengers, 57.7 million travelled on EU airlines, and 29.5 million on non-EU airlines.
Passenger numbers on charter airlines have been declining in recent years, and the 2007 total of 32.2 million represents a decrease of 4.6 percent on 2006.
Add to: del.icio.us | Digg it | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit
To book gatwick airport hotels or gatwick airport parking at the lowest price, click on these links to two great gatwick airport parking and gatwick airport hotels price comparison pages.
