Gatwick Airport

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Gatwick Airport
Gatwick Airport logo.svg
Gatwick South Terminal.jpg
Characteristics
ICAO code EGKK
IATA code LGW
Coordinates

51 ° 8 '53 "  N , 0 ° 11' 25"  W Coordinates: 51 ° 8 '53 "  N , 0 ° 11' 25"  W.

Height above MSL 59.7 m (196  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center 45 km south of London
Street M23 Motorway, London-Brighton Road (A23)
train Gatwick Express , London-Brighton Line, Thameslink
Basic data
opening 1958
operator Vinci Airports
surface 680 ha
Terminals 2
Passengers 46,086,089 (2018)
Air freight 112,600 t (2018)
Flight
movements
283,919 (2018)
Capacity
( PAX per year)
approx. 40 million
Employees about 25,000
Runways
08R / 26L 3316 m × 45 m asphalt
08L / 26R 2565 m × 45 m asphalt

is used as a taxiway

i1 i3 i5

i7 i10 i12 i14

The Gatwick Airport (formerly officially London Gatwick Airport ) is 46 million passengers a year to Heathrow 's second largest of London's airports and the United Kingdom and the eighth largest airport in Europe (as of 2018). It was opened on June 9, 1958 by Queen Elizabeth II .

Location and transport links

The airport is about 40 kilometers south of London in the Borough of Crawley in the county of West Sussex , about halfway to the Channel coast with the seaside resort of Brighton .

Gatwick Airport train station is just below the South Terminal . From there there are regular train connections to London. The express train Gatwick Express runs to Victoria Station every 15 minutes without stopping, as well as a train from Southern several times an hour , which, coming from the seaside resort of Brighton , also makes a stop in East Croydon and Clapham Junction , but only takes slightly longer. There  are good connections on the Thameslink route to central train stations London Bridge and St Pancras International , Luton Airport , St Albans  and Bedford . Other Southern trains go to Ore, Eastbourne, Littlehampton, Bognor Regis, Portsmouth and Southampton, and Great Western Railway trains to Reading .

The airport has a bus station (Coach Station) from which there are regular and good long-distance bus connections. Providers such as National Express or EasyBus UK serve over 20 British destinations.

The River Mole runs under the airport in a north-south direction.

operator

The airport was operated by the BAA (formerly British Airports Authority ) until 2009 , which also operates Heathrow and Stansted airports . BAA was the subject of an investigation by the UK Competition Authority, which published preliminary findings in August 2008 that could have forced BAA to sell Gatwick, Stansted and Glasgow airports . In this context, BAA announced its decision in September 2008 to look for a buyer for Gatwick.

In December 2009 the airport was sold to infrastructure investor Global Infrastructure Partners , who also operate London City Airport , for £ 1.5 billion . In June 2010 the airport was renamed Gatwick Airport under the new owner company as part of an extensive restructuring . The previous official name addition London was dropped. However, since the change, the airport has been advertising with the slogan Your London Airport .

In December 2018 it was announced that 50.01% of the shares in the French Vinci group would be sold, which will operate 46 airports worldwide with this purchase. Gatwick was valued at £ 2.9 billion on this transaction. The sale was completed in May 2019.

Infrastructure

Airport layout

Start-and runway

Gatwick is the world's busiest airport with only one active runway. Since both runways are only 200 meters apart, only one runway can be used as a runway, while the second serves as a taxiway. Since the shorter runway 08L / 26R does not have an ILS, it is used almost exclusively as a taxiway. Only z. B. for maintenance work, preferably at the end of the day, 08L / 26R is used for take-off and landing, and 08R / 26L for taxiing.

Plans to build another, independent runway led to violent protests from local residents, who feared more noise and emissions. A contract has been concluded with the local administration that will prevent construction until at least 2019. Nevertheless, there are more and more concrete plans for the construction of another runway and a third terminal.

Terminal building

North Terminal

Construction of the North Terminal began in 1983; it was the largest construction project south of London in the 1980s. In 1988 Queen Elizabeth II opened this terminal.

South Terminal

The main hall and central pier of the South Terminal were built between 1956 and 1958. The British Queen Elizabeth II opened the airport on June 9, 1958. In 1962, two additional piers were opened. In 1983 the north pier was demolished and a circular satellite terminal was built in its place, which was connected to the main terminal by the first automatic cable car in Great Britain. The track was shut down and replaced by a new connection with treadmills. The main hall was rebuilt and expanded several times; In addition to the arrivals area in the northern part of the South Terminal and the check-in counters south of it, there are two large areas with shops and cafés: The "Gatwick Village" on the first floor is accessible to all visitors, the extensive duty-free area behind security is more like a shopping mall than a waiting room .

"The Beehive"

The Beehive

The 1936 opened the first terminal building of the airport, The Beehive ( the hive ), was developed by Frank Hoar planned Marlow and Lovett and was the first fully-integrated terminal building in the world. It was used until the 1950s. When the new South Terminals were built, the train station was also relocated so that the original terminal building was cut off from the rest of the airport. As a result, it was used as a terminal for helicopter flights . It later served as an administration building, from 1989 onwards GB Airways had its headquarters in the Art Deco- style building. When the company was taken over by EasyJet in January 2008 , it remained with the previous owner of Gibraltar Airways, the Bland Group. The building is since 1996 Listed Building in the Grade II * , and thus one of only twelve so be arranged buildings in Crawley.

Gatwick Airport in 1981

Airlines and Destinations

Gatwick has numerous routes to European cities and holiday destinations as well as various long-haul connections. For example Dublin , Minsk , Faro , Dubai , Toronto and Barbados are served .

After Heathrow, the airport is the most important base for British Airways , which serves various destinations in the Caribbean , for example , as well as easyJet , as well as TUI Airways and Thomas Cook Airlines , which as charter airlines are not allowed to take off from Heathrow. Emirates from Dubai is allowed to land at Heathrow five times a day with the A380 . Since the airline to London needs more capacity, Gatwick is also served three times a day with the A380.

Incidents

  • On February 17, 1959, a Vickers 794D Viscount of the Türk Hava Yollari - THY ( aircraft registration TC-SEV ) was flown into the ground while approaching London-Gatwick Airport ( controlled flight into terrain ). The machine coming from Rome fell below the glide path of the instrument landing system and collided with trees 5.2 kilometers west of the airport and caught fire. Of the 24 people on board, 14 were killed.
  • On January 5, 1969, a Boeing 727-113C of Ariana Afghan Airlines (YA-FAR) was flown into the ground during the night approach to Gatwick Airport (Controlled flight into terrain). The approach was started in heavy fog with a visibility of 100 meters, although the required minimum visibility was 400 meters. The machine coming from Frankfurt fell below the glide path of the instrument landing system and was no longer intercepted in time. It hit about 2.5 kilometers from the runway and broke, killing 48 of the 62 people on board and two people on the ground.
  • On July 26, 1969, the nose landing gear of an Airspeed Ambassador ( G-ALZR ) of BKS Air Transport broke during landing on a cargo flight . Due to the amount of damage, the machine was written off as a total loss; the eight people on board were not injured.
  • Flight operations were temporarily suspended on December 19, 2018 at 9 p.m. GMT. One or more drones were spotted repeatedly over the airport premises. The drones were apparently used specifically to hinder flight operations. On December 20, 2018, flight operations were briefly possible in the morning at 3 a.m. for around 45 minutes. After that, air traffic was stopped again because at least one drone was spotted again. The National Police Air Service and the British military were called in to support the search for the operators of the apparently professional drones . On December 21, 2018, flight operations resumed at 11 a.m., however, after another drone sighting at 5:10 p.m. local time, it was interrupted again for almost an hour and a half. As a result, the British military installed jammers that allowed safe flight operations. According to the Daily Mail newspaper, the army deployed the Drone Dome anti- drone system from the Israeli defense company Rafael . Two suspects were arrested late in the evening, but released on December 23 as no longer suspects. The police do not rule out that the drone sightings were a mistake and that there were no drone flights. Furthermore, there are no clear images of the drones so far.

See also

Web links

Commons : London Gatwick Airport  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Passenger numbers at all airports in the United Kingdom. (PDF; 79 KB) In: caa.co.uk. Civil Aviation Authority , accessed July 28, 2019 .
  2. Freight figures from all UK airports. (PDF; 71 KB) In: caa.co.uk. Civil Aviation Authority , accessed July 28, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Aircraft movements at all UK airports. (PDF; 157 KB) In: caa.co.uk. Civil Aviation Authority , accessed July 28, 2019 .
  4. http://www.checkmybus.de/london-gatwick-flughafen
  5. ^ Gatwick Airport put up for sale , BBC. September 17, 2008. 
  6. London Gatwick Airport sold , Focus. September 21, 2009. 
  7. London Gatwick Airport sold , Gatwick Airport Official Website. December 4, 2009. Archived from the original on March 1, 2010 Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gatwickairport.com 
  8. Gatwick Airport drops 'London' brand ahead of £ 1bn revamp , flightglobal.com (English), June 21, 2010
  9. Gatwick Airport: Home page header
  10. Les Echos: Vinci Airports va prendre le contrôle de Londres-Gatwick , December 27, 2018, accessed on the same day (French)
  11. Handelsblatt: French take over majority at London Gatwick Airport. December 27, 2018 (accessed December 30, 2018)
  12. Vinci seals deal for majority stake at Gatwick airport. Reuters UK, May 14, 2019, accessed July 28, 2019 .
  13. Elisabeth II. ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Histoclips.de, accessed on June 8, 2011 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.histoclips.de
  14. ^ Peter Gwynne: 12 - The New Town: Maturity . In: A History of Crawley ( English ), 1st Edition. Edition, Phillimore & Co, Chichester 1990, ISBN 0-85033-718-6 , p. 165.
  15. accident report Viscount 700D TC-SEV , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on 27 December 2018th
  16. ^ Accident report B-727-100 YA-FAR , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on December 27, 2018.
  17. ^ Accident report AS.57 Ambassador G-ALZR , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on January 28, 2016.
  18. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-46623754
  19. London Gatwick Airport paralyzed. In: srf.ch . December 20, 2018, accessed December 20, 2018 .
  20. Police are considering shooting down the Gatwick drone , accessed December 20, 2018
  21. Gatwick runway reopens after drone chaos. BBC News, December 21, 2018, accessed December 21, 2018 .
  22. Disruptive actions: New drone over Gatwick - airport stops operating . In: Spiegel Online . December 21, 2018 ( spiegel.de [accessed December 21, 2018]).
  23. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-46654797
  24. Tages-Anzeiger - Gatwick Airport reopened - search for perpetrators continues , accessed on December 21, 2018
  25. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6519211/The-2-6m-Israeli-Drone-Dome-Army-used-defeat-Gatwick-UAV.html
  26. British police arrest two suspects after drone flights. Zeit online, December 22, 2018, accessed December 22, 2018 .
  27. http://m.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/flughafen-gatwick-drohnen-stoermanoever-festhabene-wieder-frei-a-1245265.html
  28. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/gatwick-drone-latest-police-say-it-is-a-possibility-there-was-never-a-drone-a4024626.html