Gatwick to invest to attract more business  

The new owners of Gatwick Global Infrastructure Partners are to invest a £1 billion pounds to take on Heathrow with a view to attracting more low cost and long haul airlines.

Funds will be spent on the transport network and to up grade facilities throughout the airport with the overall objective of increasing passenger numbers from £32 million to £45 million by 2013. This will delight the Competition Commission who long argued that BAA by owning both Heathrow and Gatwick were not sufficiently motivated to create competition between the two airports.

The North terminal in particular will be given a complete overall with investment made to speed up check in and make the process as quick as possible to attract customers from other airports.

The attack is double edged, if Gatwick becomes the number one customer choice for flying out of any of the London airports, airlines will achieve better occupancy levels that will then encourage them to base more planes at the airport.

The stumbling block to all this would still appear there being only one runway at Gatwick. Heathrow currently operates from two runways and sees 68 million passengers passing through 5 terminals and is already operating at at full capacity.

To achieve these passenger increases airline traffic movements would have to increase by 40%, and it is difficult to see how they could be done without service levels being affected.

On top of this terminal capacity, airport car parks, airport hotels would all need to be increased to accommodate 45 million passengers. There is only so much you can do to persuade people to use public transport and the easing of off airport car parks planning will have to be looked at.

Clearly both on and off car parks are going to fill far quicker in the coming years and to guarantee a space early booking for Gatwick airport parking will be a must otherwise some customers will be forced to use rail bus or even taxis.