Gatwick Airport aims to double India traffic in 5 yrs: CCO Jonathan Pollard

Currently, a total of 24 flights per week are being operated between India and Gatwick Airport. Air India has been operating all 24 services since April last year

Gatwick Airport, London, aims to double its India flights in five years as the demand for direct flights between India and the UK is huge, Jonathan Pollard, chief commercial officer of the airport, told Business Standard in an interview.

Currently there are 24 flights a week between India and Gatwick Airport.

Air India has been operating all the 24 since April last year.

“A realistic view, five years from now, would be having six or seven daily flights to India. This would mean 49 flights to India per week. Based on the conversations we have had, that would be a reasonable target for us,” Pollard noted.

 

There are six airports in London. Only two of them -- Gatwick and Heathrow -- have flights to India. Heathrow, the largest of the six, handles 232 services per week to and from India.

Under the bilateral agreement signed between India and the UK, there is no limit on the number of flights from Gatwick and six major Indian cities -- Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Chennai.

“The growth opportunity is huge,” he noted.

Pollard said traffic between India and Gatwick was predominantly point-to-point.

“We would welcome the opportunity to provide some onward connectivity. However, right now, Air India’s services are less than a year old. Therefore, between India and Gatwick, it is predominantly point-to-point traffic. Maybe, as the network grows, there would be routes that are less point-to-point dependent,” he mentioned.

Even if Gatwick is able to fulfil its target of handling 49 India flights a week, the size of its India operations will still be significantly smaller than that of Heathrow.

“That is because of the slot capacity. Most of our new slot capacity would come on stream from 2029,” he said.

Gatwick Airport has two runways but can operate only one at a time because the centre lines of both runways are too close. “Once we move the centre lines, we would be able to use both at the same time. We are looking for permission to do this by 2029,” he noted.

Gatwick Airport has the capacity to handle 55 aircraft movements per hour. The airport would be handling 44 million passengers this year and it is expecting to handle “north of 50 million passengers” in three years, he noted.

“A lot of people are travelling between India and London via the Middle East. India is underserved massively from the UK by the direct flight capacity. That has been beneficial for some Middle-Eastern carriers. I am sure that will still continue. There is a market for both (one-stop as well as non-stop) flights between India and London. There is undeniably more opportunity for direct flight capacity,” he added.