When you look at the nature of
demand for the next 30 years, the majority will be short-haul
distribution systems and on eight out of ten Gatwick carriers. In any case, Stephenson argues, the bulk of Gatwick passengers, and indeed, the UK’s, are flying point-to-point, with Gatwick already boasting 46 of Europe’s top 50 business destinations and 11 domestic routes. “When you look at the nature of demand for the next 30 years, the majority will be short-haul. We happen to think that building a mega-hub at huge cost is not the way to solve that. BA will be its biggest user, does not have a growth strategy and has all the slots it needs. You’re building it to deliver an important, but really small, part of the demand over the next 30 years, so why do it?”
PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS For many, Gatwick’s Achilles’ heel has always been its distance from the capital – if only a psychological one, given the 30-minute train journey time. Stephenson protests that Gatwick is no further than Seoul’s Incheon or Beijing’s planned Daxing airport and that connectivity is about to improve drastically, with the number of directly linked stations rising from 129 to 175 by 2020 and the Brighton- Bedford Thameslink route extending to Cambridge – a near tripling of capacity over the next 20 years. “It will be as big as Crossrail,” he enthuses. More immediately, there will be one train to the capital every two-and-a-half minutes by 2019, and Gatwick will become part of the Oyster network this autumn.
The debate will rumble on for the next
year. Heathrow claims to be confident that it has already won the war, but even if Gatwick loses, it will have won a few arguments on the way.
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM BBT JULY/AUGUST 2014 25
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92