Name: London Gatwick Airport
IATA code: LGW
Address: Gatwick Airport, West Sussex, RH6 0NP, UK
Telephone: +44 (0) 870 000 2468
Website: www.gatwickairport.com

Although there has been an airfield at the site since about 1930, the current London Gatwick Airport was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1958. The previous decades had seen the airport used mainly as a maintenance facility with some limited charter services being available. Over the years London Gatwick Airport has grown into one of the busiest airports in the United Kingdom, second only to London Heathrow. In 2007 over 35 million passengers passed through Gatwick on their way to and from over 200 domestic and international destinations. Traditionally Gatwick has been a major base for charter airlines and transatlantic services due to restrictions on Heathrow, but changing attitudes towards air travel and the recent Open Skies Agreement between the EU and US are likely to cause a shift in the focus of the airport from an intercontinental hub to a major source of domestic and European services. At present around 70 scheduled and charter airlines offer flights to and from London Gatwick Airport. Aer Lingus, British Airways, easyjet and Virgin Atlantic have bases here as well as charters airlines such as Monarch Airlines, Thomas Cook Airlines and Thomson Airways.

British Airways and easyjet are the scheduled airlines with the largest presence at the airport; between them, they accounted for around 40% of the total air traffic here in 2007. Easyjet offers flights from London Gatwick Airport to domestic and European locations such as Amsterdam, Athens, Belfast, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Gibraltar, Glasgow, Helsinki, Inverness, Lisbon, Krakow, Madrid, Mykonos, Sofia and Toulouse. British Airways serves destinations in the UK, Europe, the Americas, Africa and Middle East. Some of the flights from London Gatwick Airport offered by British Airways include Jersey, Barcelona, Bari, Dubrovnik, Luxembourg, Malta, Venice, Antigua, Bridgetown, Bermuda, New York, Orlando, St Lucia, Izmir and Tunis. Scheduled flights to Gatwick from smaller domestic destinations such as Newquay and Plymouth are provided by Air Southwest. Seasonal routes offered by the dominant charter airlines include long-haul destinations such as Acapulco, Aruba, Cancun, Goa, Montego Bay, New Orleans and Vancouver. Other airlines currently operating flights from London Gatwick Airport are Cyprus Turkish Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Emirates, Qatar Airways, bmi, Flybe, Jet2.com, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Olympic Airlines, Ryanair, US Airlines and Viking Airlines.

If you can’t find flights to London Gatwick Airport (or from), then the nearest alternative airports are London Heathrow and London City. Due to the good transport links around the capital, London Luton and London Stansted are also within easy reach.

It should be noted that London Gatwick Airport is actually 29 miles south of London; thankfully, the airports great transport links with the capital ensure an easy journey to or from the city centre and surrounding area. Full transport information is given on the airport website.