Gatwick: One Runway, 43 Million Passengers and a 12-Metre Runway Shift

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London Gatwick in Crawley, West Sussex, handles over 43 million passengers a year, the second-busiest airport in the UK and tenth in Europe, on one active runway. It began as a grass aerodrome in the late 1920s, started commercial flights in 1933, and served as RAF Gatwick in World War II. After the circular 1935 Beehive terminal, architects Yorke Rosenberg Mardall led a 1955 to 1988 redevelopment whose South Terminal opened in May 1958 as one of the first enclosed pier-based terminals, letting passengers walk indoors to their planes. In 1983 it added the UK's first automated people mover, to a satellite pier.

The 1978 Bermuda II treaty let only a few airlines, including British Airways, Pan Am and TWA, fly to the U.S. from Heathrow, pushing other U.S. carriers to Gatwick. The 2008 EU-US Open Skies deal ended that, and after US Airways dropped Charlotte in 2013, Gatwick had no scheduled U.S. airline until JetBlue arrived in 2021. Ordered sold by the Competition Commission in 2009, it went to a consortium led by Global Infrastructure Partners for £1.51 billion, with Vinci later taking 50.01 percent. A plan to move the northern runway 12 meters so both can operate together was approved in September 2025 and upheld by the Court of Appeal in August 2026.

• The two runways sit 656 feet apart, too close for simultaneous use because of wake turbulence, so the northern one serves mainly as a taxiway.
• A 1979 agreement with West Sussex County Council barred a second runway for 40 years, and in 2015 the Airports Commission backed Heathrow instead.
• easyJet paid £20 million for 25 pairs of daily slots left by Flybe and now bases over 60 aircraft at Gatwick, its largest base.
• Drone sightings from December 19, 2018, shut the runway over three days, stranding or delaying 110,000 passengers; a local couple was arrested and released without charge.
• A 1959 Turkish Airlines crash in fog killed 14, and a 1969 Ariana Afghan Airlines crash into a house killed 50.