Is Gatwick losing it's major international airport status?
The last of this departed with the US majors to Heathrow in 2008. Gatwick remains a leisure airfield with only Emirates and Qatar as major long haul business carriers, with BA and Virgin operating primarily sun and leisure routes.
Air Berlin have gained slots and are moving their STN ops round the M25. However Gatwick is still not as busy as recent years due to downsizing of the BA hub and the loss of the US majors, neither of which was to so with runway capacity as they both moved to equallty constrained Heathrow.
From my perspective, the future of Gatwick looks very bleak indeed, recession or no recession!
Have you ever been to Gatwick? easyJet have made something of an impact I have to say. To be honest, this reads like someone's homework question for a course of some sort.