Looking longer term
Our Masterplan offers a low impact way of unlocking new capacity and increasing resilience by making best use of the airport's existing infrastructure. We plan to use new technologies on our Main Runway and bring the existing Northern Runway into routine use.
Additional capacity
By bringing the existing Northern Runway into routine use, London Gatwick will be able to add additional hourly aircraft movements in peak times, using existing flightpaths. It is predicted around 75 million passengers would travel through the airport each year by the late 2030s, with an annual limit of 386,000 commercial air traffic movements.
Operational resilience
Unlocking extra capacity will help London Gatwick continue to provide good levels of service for passengers and airlines. This will also add further resilience to the wider system of London airports.
Enhanced competition
Additional capacity will provide further opportunities for airline innovation and passenger choice, building on the positive impact that competition has already made to airport users’ experience.
Economic growth
The Northern Runway plans are forecast to inject nearly £1bn into the region’s economy every year and deliver an additional 14,000 jobs. New global connections will also create new business opportunities for the national and regional economy - air cargo, for example, is forecast to grow strongly, increasing from 150,000 tonnes in 2018/19 to around 305,000 tonnes by 2032.
Similar noise footprint
The airport will commit to a legally binding noise footprint, which over time will reduce even though there are more flights. This is mainly because of the introduction of new, quieter aircraft technology which has already made a significant difference, with the airport’s noise footprint reducing by 41% over the past 20 years. The airport will also introduce an enhanced noise insulation scheme for those properties most affected.
Minimal disruption
The Northern Runway plans will be privately financed and low impact. The majority of construction activity will take place within the existing airport boundary and the proposed road improvements will enhance access, as well as benefiting local road users.
Our latest Masterplan was published in October 2018, with the purpose of showing our vision for how the airport intends to grow and develop. It also helps to set out our wider regional and local planning process, in accordance with best practice. In line with Government policy, our plan looked at how we could make the best use of our existing infrastructure. From this we set out three scenarios for future growth and we asked for views on each of these scenarios.
The consultation responses showed broad support for growth at Gatwick in line with Government policy, both through making more efficient use of the existing Main Runway and by the introduction of a dual runway operation using the existing Northern Runway.
We published a full Masterplan consultation report - that describes the consultation process. It mentions the key themes raised and our initial response to the feedback we received. We also published the final version of our Master Plan 2019.