Obviously an excellent outcome for Virgin, the Crew Passengers and aviation as a whole.
I wonder if anyone does the maths to calculate how much it costs for Gatwick to be closed for an hour or how long it is/was. Its not just the aircraft that have been diverted but of course they are now in the wrong position for their next flight etc.
Who pays the costs of all these diversions? Do Gatwick get paid for the loss of income of having the runway closed?
Obviously it would have been nice to have had a choice of diverting to Manston but then someone would have to pay the costs of keeping the airfield open with emergency fire service car and sufficient staff to sort out an incident like this.
Suspect there aren't many volunteers to pay those costs but is probably worth those that want Manston to be compulsorily purchased to be suggesting that the other major London airports and government should be paying towards the costs of keeping Manston open so that in cases like this a damaged aircraft can go to it instead.
Its extremely unlikely to happen though.