Airline chiefs press Gatwick airport to improve performance

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Airlines are piling pressure on Gatwick airport to improve its performance after staff shortages in the control tower led to serious disruption over the summer.

Senior executives are pushing the UK’s second-busiest airport for assurances on how many flights it will be able to handle over the next year to allow them to plan their flight schedules.

Johan Lundgren, chief executive of easyJet, the largest airline at Gatwick, told the Financial Times the issues experienced this summer “cannot be repeated next year”.

“The priority now must be that Gatwick and [air traffic controller] NATS work together to resolve the staffing issues,” he said.

Lundgren has written to NATS and the airport seeking assurances over service levels.

British Airways chief executive Sean Doyle said it had been a “very challenging” time for Gatwick.

“It is very important it is resourced correctly . . . for the second-biggest airport in the UK, we need to be doing better,” he said as the airline reported results on Friday. 

Airline executives said absences in the tower had led to the airport imposing “flow restrictions” at short notice this summer leading to air traffic disruptions.

While the seasonal slowdown in flights over the winter should offer some respite, there is concern that there will be more disruption next summer unless the staffing problems in the tower are resolved. 

Between September 25 and October 15, Gatwick placed an unusual cap on flights operating from the airport because of sickness and other “staffing constraints” in its control tower.

The airport subcontracts operations in its control tower to NATS, the UK’s main air traffic manager, which in September said up to 30 per cent of its staff had been unavailable “for a variety of medical reasons”, including Covid-19.

During September, 46 per cent of flights from…