Airport Guide

History of Gatwick Airport

While Gatwick can trace its history right back to the 1920s, when it was home to the Surrey Auto Club, its early years were marred with accidents and concerns over high levels of fog and water-logging, leading the government to favour Stansted for many years.

It was only really in the 1970s that Gatwick as it is known today came into being, with the airport welcoming the first affordable trans-Atlantic services to Los Angeles and New York's JFK.

More recently, a major extension to the airport's North Terminal was opened in 2000 to cope with rising passenger numbers while a £110 million additional aircraft pier and a major new baggage reclaim hall have also been opened over the past few years.

Now as well as being London's second biggest airport, it ranks 22 in the global charts and, most notably, holds the crown for the busiest single runway airport on the planet, with no real plans in place at the moment to expand upon this.

Travelling to Gatwick Airport

Given that in the 1960s Gatwick became the first airport in the world to have a direct rail link to a major city, it is fitting that it is easy to get to and from without a car, though it is often by no means cheap.

The airport is well serviced by trains running along the Brighton Main Line and therefore London Victoria and London Bridge stations, with a journey time of around half an hour – considerably cheaper than the link to its old rival in Stanstead.

Likewise, it's just as easy to start a holiday by getting to the airport by coach, with National Express and a number of other companies going there from all over the UK in addition to numerous cheap and easy links to local towns such as Crawley and Horsham.

Travelling to Gatwick by road couldn't be simpler as it is accessed by a dedicated motorway spur road off the M23, making access from the capital as well as the rest of the south east in general. Just nine miles away London's ring road, the M25, can also be used to get to and from the north and west of the country.

Major airlines flying out of Gatwick Airport

The biggest player using Gatwick Airport is British Airways, which jets out of the West Sussex hub to dozens of European and world destinations, including the summer holiday favourites of Orlando in Florida, Palma de Mallorca, Bermuda and Ibiza. The national carrier also offers some lesser-known routes from Gatwick such as those to Paphos, Dallas, Varna and Sarajevo.

Over the past few years, a deep shade of orange has settled over Gatwick, with the budget airline easyJet now flying out of both of the airport's terminals to dozens of European destinations as well as to Sharm el-Sheikh, while Monarch and Thomsonfly also have a strong summer presence, whisking millions of holidaymakers off to the sun.

Olympic Hong Kong Airlines, Northwest, Ghana International and Estonian Air are among the dozens more operators using Gatwick as a take-off point.