Financial Times - Sylvia Pfeifer
The boss of London’s Gatwick airport expects passenger volumes to return close to pre-pandemic levels over the peak summer season but is confident passengers will not face a repeat of last year’s disruptions.
Stewart Wingate, chief executive of Britain’s second-busiest airport, said he expected passenger volumes in the third quarter of 2023, which includes the peak summer school holiday period, to reach 94 per cent of the levels recorded in the same period in 2019.
“We expect in 2023 Gatwick will certainly be busier over the summer period and perhaps a bit more peaky than it was before the pandemic,” Wingate told the Financial Times.
Resurgent demand for short-haul travel has led the recovery in passenger numbers. Wingate said he expected easyJet, the airport’s biggest airline, to have 80 aircraft based at Gatwick over the peak of the summer, compared with 63 in 2019.
