I took an internal flight in India (Udaipur-Delhi) with IndiGo at the end of last month, a very slick/impressive operation I have to say.

Just by the by, African Safari go way back further than the 1990s. I recall them operating a Britannia with the zebra striped tail from LGW in the 1970s.

Emirates wants more Gatwick slots
 

Attended the hearing of the Planning Inspectorate (PINS) on Thursday (2 May 2024) re Gatwick's application to bring its current standby / emergency runway into routine use to voice my support as an interested party living on the airport's doorstep in Crawley and listened with great interest to what Richard Jewesbury, Emirates country manager for the UK (and the Republic of Ireland as well I believe) had to say. It was very encouraging to hear him say that Emirates really values its long-standing business relationship with Gatwick which started back in 1987 when it became the first airport in Europe to which Emirates flew, that Gatwick generates both very strong and profitable outbound and inbound traffic flows, that Emirates wants more Gatwick slots, that they think the airport's proposal re its standby runway is a very smart way of making the best use of its existing facilities and that therefore they fully support it.

Nice to see a highly regarded long-haul airline recognise the value of Gatwick as a distinct catchment in its own right rather than a temporary Heathrow overflow and to fully commit to the airport for the long term. (Emirates have replicated this thinking at Stansted as well b.t.w., where its president Tim Clark has gone on record during a recent aviation industry get-together, saying that there is room for a third daily Emirates service at Stansted.) This not only makes me think that Emirates is going to revisit its pre pandemic plan to add a fourth daily Gatwick-Dubai frequency sooner rather than later, but my hope is also that more long-haul airlines will eventually come round to Emirates' point of view re Gatwick's value as a destination / point-of-origin in its own right.

IMHO, in addition to Qatar Airways, Air India is one of the airlines best-placed - over the medium to long term - to adopt Emirates' thinking on Gatwick, provided that they succeed in making India a hub for global air travel (centred on Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru) and adopt the MEB3 super connector model so successfully pioneered by Emirates over the past 15 years or so. Given that Singapore Airlines is slated to own 25.1% of Air India upon completion of the integration of Air India, Air India Express and Vistara (the Indian FSC originally established as a JV between the Tata group, the Indian tea to steel conglomerate whose founding family were the original owners of Air India and re-aqcuired the airline from the Indian government two years ago, and Singapore Airlines), my hope is also that Air India and Singapore Airlines will eventually integrate their operations along the lines of Air France - KLM, with Singapore Airlines not only contributing its Changi hub as the combined Air India - Singapore Airlines' fourth global hub, but also adopting Emirates' thinking on Gatwick.

"Gatwick as a catchment area in it's own right". What he means is that Emirates, as a quite exceptional carrier, can succeed where others fail. They can succesfully serve London from LHR, LGW and STN whereas most airlines cannot and should not even try. You scoffed at Lufthansa attempting to do this and blamed the carrier when in fact, it's a function of the market. Same goes for Aer Lingus, although I was surprised myself at that one. Delta run LGW-JFK on decades old B767s and LHR-JFK on factory new A339s with Delta One. That's a good example of the "Gatwick catchment area" vs. LHR waiting room, it's a relatively inferior offering. The growth in long haul with the Chinese carriers and Ethiopian is great BUT would up sticks and move to LHR tomorrow if they could get slots. As would Air Mauritius if they can get more slots, they didn't sell their LHR slots and given their cash situation, that's interesting.

Dedicated LGW long haul is BA, Norse, TUI, Emirates, Qatar and Icelandair. The rest would move out entirely if the market allowed them LHR access. Air India at LGW is a country mile from their own catchment area in London.

One might argue over Icelandair as ‘dedicated LGW long haul’

LGW long-haul
 

Correct. If Icelandair at LGW is classed as "long-haul", then the same criteria should also apply to Turkish Airlines at LGW.

Making LGW work for FSCs
 

I stand by what I said in one of my earlier contributions re Lufthansa being largely to blame for not succeeding to make LGW-FRA work for them. Not only did LH not have to face any direct LCC competitor (discounting Ryanair's STN-HHN service as STN is completely outside the Gatwick catchment area - essentially all of Sussex and Kent, east Surrey, the parts of Hants adjoining West Sussex (essentially Portsmouth) and south London (essentially Croydon) and HHN is actually closer to Luxembourg than to Frankfurt), there is also no competition from Eurostar (which, even if there was, would be irrelevant for the Gatwick catchment since Eurostar ditched Ashford as an en route pick-up / drop-off point in favour of Ebbsfleet). Had LH chosen different departure and arrival times at LGW which would have enabled people at either end of the route to make a day-return trip to either Frankfurt or London and their respective surroundings, the outcome could have been different as this would have been of interest to higher yield business traffic, for both business travellers living in LGW's catchment and those headed for it. However, an 11:15 am LGW departure gets you into FRA around 2 pm local time, meaning you have to head back to FRA airport barely two hours after you reached! Even in the opposite direction, for FRA-based day trippers, a 10:30 am arrival into LGW and a 5:45 pm (or thereabouts) LGW departure time is too short for a day-return. This left LH only with connecting passengers, a generally lower yielding market (compared with P2P) on LGW-FRA, an extremely competitive market, where - as far as direct competition at LGW is concerned, LH faced stiff competition from EK, QR and TK, all of which arguably have a better hard and soft product than LH, especially at the back of the plane, with EK and TK also having higher frequencies ex-LGW than LH (3 flights per day and up to 4 flights per day, respectively, vs. only 2 flights per day). As well, the final destinations of most of the FSC one-stop connections for people flying out of or into LGW tend to be in Asia - especially the Indian subcontinent and the Far East - where (apart from TK in India itself), EK / QR / TK either fly to far more places or have many more flights than LH). Given these indisputable facts, what did LH expect? How could they even think that their LGW-FRA service would not end in failure?

Re Delta's old 767s on LGW-JFK vs. their state-of-the-art 339s (and 359s) at LHR (with superior on-board products). True. But DL also fly the same, decades-old, clapped-out 767s on many of their other European routes, incl. routes serving capital cities with only one airport. Even United fly decades-old, clapped-out 767s on many of their prime TATL routes serving LHR! While these may have better on-board products than those 767s DL use to serve LGW and other secondary, seasonal European routes, they're still old, obsolete aircraft nonetheless, a bit like putting lipstick on a pig to disguise the fact that it is a pig.

Lastly, re LGW being miles from Air India's [west] London catchment around LHR, you are mistaken if you think that Indians and people of Indian origin in the UK only live around LHR despite their heavy concentration in the area. In fact, many Indian care home and IT workers in the UK actually work and live in LGW's catchment as well; in the case of IT workers, many of these people are in Crawley itself and nearby Horsham, working for companies like Thales and Royal Sun Alliance, respectively, for example; in the case of care home workers, many of these people are scattered across the entire Gatwick Diamond business region stretching from Brighton in the south to Croydon in the north and also stretching from the Portsmouth area in the west to the Eastbourne area in the east along the South Coast. And this is before even factoring in the region's diaspora (those settled in the area served by LGW for several generations). What this means in the context of AI's current four LGW routes serving Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Goa and Kochi for example is that only as far as Amritsar in the northwestern Indian state of Punjab is concerned, almost all users actually live in LHR's catchment; re Ahmedabad, while there are many people in LHR's catchment who originally came to the UK from the western Indian state of Gujarat (or whose descendants had migrated from there to East Africa during the colonial era before coming to the UK as well), there are also many people from this region of India in LGW's catchnent; as far as Kochi in the southwestern Indian state of Kerala is concerned, many more people using this service actually work and live in LGW's catchment than LHR's catchment, with many among them being care home workers, so LGW - rather than LHR - being the ideal airport for this route in particular; Goa, by comparison, doesn't have a big diaspora, especially in the Southeast (there is a bigger Goan community in the Midlands), with AI's LGW-GOX route primarily used by price-sensitive Brits for whom the London area airport is not the main consideration. Even AI's originally planned but now postponed LGW-BLR route, while unlike the other, more leisure- / VFR-focused LGW routes being more business-focused, will be well patronised if served from LGW rather than LHR given the large number of IT workers in LGW's catchment, many of whom are from Bengaluru, India's primary IT capital, or are settled there. Therefore, if there is an airline ideally suited to follow in Emirates' footsteps, i.e., adopting the MEB3 super connector global hub-and-spoke business model, incl. serving multiple London area airports, Air India must surely be a prime candidate for this role.

Flygatwick

I do appreciate your efforts, enthusiasm and input regarding London Gatwick Airport. You make some interesting points.

But if I could just make these polite remarks.

Your posts would be far easier to read and much more informative if your paragraphs weren't so long. Sentences lasting forever before a full stop. I give up reading the entirety of your posts as they come across as totally disconbobulated.

You have a lot of enthusiasm, which is obvious from your posts but please make them more reader friendly 😀

My comments to FlyGatwick.
1. LH - How many slots do you think are now available at LGW? None for a full day in Germany. Easyjet have tried all sorts of German cities, they do not make good money.
2. AI - How you been to Airports in India? They are nothing in comparison to ME3 carriers. Once India builds some new Airports, which they will do then they can look to some of those transit markets. I suspect if they get more slots at LHR, then they will transfer. The AI operation at LHR is well established and will always be the primary end game if slots become available. They are part of the Star Alliance so will want to be closer to UA, LH & TK at LHR.

LGW slot availability & state of Indian airports / AI's future at LGW
 

I agree with you on LGW slot availability and UK-Germany flights (with the exception of certain LCY flights) being traditionally low-yield and largely unprofitable in their own right. Nonetheless, LH should have known that with the slots they managed to get at LGW for their FRA flights, this was unlikely to be successful.

As far as the state of Indian airports vis-à-vis their counterparts in the Gulf is concerned, it depends to which airport you specifically refer. The standards vary widely. The one I have experienced at Bengaluru (Kempegowda Airport) - especially the new Terminal 2 - is world-class. In fact, in some aspects it's arguably ahead of DXB and not very far behind Singapore Changi. And then there is the brand-new airport at Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), which is set to open its doors later this year or early next. It'll be a two-runway airport from the start, and therefore will lend itself as a hub (unlike the current BOM airport, which like LGW is operated as a single-runway airport).

Air India's future at LGW will depend not only on LHR slot availability, but what their ultimate strategy pending a successful turnaround of the airline will be, i.e., whether they'll adopt the MEB3 global super connector business model. If that's the case, even though their main focus will always be on LHR, It'll actually make sense to link their Indian hubs to multiple London area airports, just like EK and QR do. The fact that AI are part of the Star Alliance should IMO not be an obstacle here. Further in this context, I actually disagree with you that being closer to its Star Alliance partners at LHR is an end for AI in itself, without taking into consideration whether the connections these partners can offer at LHR are actually sensible. If AI wants to enable its passengers to connect seamless to and from destinations in Germany to which it doesn't fly with its own metal, it will surely be far more efficient to do this via the LH hubs in FRA and MUC as connecting to / from Germany at LHR involves significant backtracking. And as far as facilitating TATL connections at LHR via AI's Star partners UA and AC is concerned, although these don't involve backtracking unlike in the case of Germany, encouraging AI passengers to transfer at LHR to / from UA and AC actually results in a revenue loss for AI's non-stop India-US and India-Canada flights, undermining the profitability of these ultra long-haul services - reportedly, AI's most profitable routes. This is therefore not in AI's interest (with the same applying to AI passengers changing at FRA or MUC onto LH / UA / AC TATL flights). Lastly, there is also the geopolitical factor impeding closer collaboration between AI and TK (apart from transferring between AI and TK flights at LHR involving even more backtracking than transferring between AI and LH flights at LHR, and TK's fast-growing IST hub being viewed with the same suspicion as EK's and QR's respective hubs at DXB and DOH by AI's top managenent). Turkey has traditionally been viewed in India as a friend of Pakistan, India's long-standing rival and foe. This is a widely held view amogst Indians, even at board level, and let's not forget in this context that AI's ultimate owners, the Tatas, are after all born and have lived in India for all of their lives despite their carefully crafted, highly polished cosmopolitan appearance. As well in this context, we need to remember that the current AI CEO, New Zealand national, ex-Scoot CEO Campbell Wilson, only got this role after his short-lived predecessor, a former TK CEO who is a Turkish national (and whose name I can't remember now) resigned in the face of strong public opposition in India to what was widely viewed as the appointment of a national of an unfriendly country, who had also gone on record previously as supporting his country's endorsement of the official Pakistani position on Kashmir, to the top job of a company many Indians regard as one of the jewels in their industrial crown.

Air Peace 777-300 operating today's LGW-LOS flight
 

Happened to see Air Peace use one of its 777-300s (one of a pair of former Singapore Airlines examples) depart Gatwick today while I was waiting for my bus to take me into Crawley from the South Terminal local bus stop 11:40-ish as takeoffs at the time were in an easterly direction over the railway tracks.

As much as I dislike the antics of the Air Peace CEO / chairman / founder / owner, the airline's livery looks absolutely stunning, especially on the 777-300. IMHO, easily the best livery of any airline currently operating at Gatwick.

Lufthansa are pulling the Gatwick service. The last flight between Gatwick and Frankfurt will be on 30th June.

Norwegian launching a winter seasonal route to Rovaniemi, also served by easyJet. I recall Finnair had winter seasonal flights to Ivalo and Rovaniemi before COVID-19.

IIRC it’s a reinstatement of a previous route. I certainly remember flying with them LGW to RVN pre-COVID.

Seems a lot of capacity to RVN, what with easyJet, Ryanair and the numerous ‘charter’ flights thrown in as well. I guess they’ve got to fly those jets somewhere in winter and the winter sun destinations are probably maxed out as well

JetBlue LGW cut to summer seasonal service.
LHR routes still operate year round.
https://onemileatatime.com/news/jetb...lantic-flying/

I am not surprised by this announcement whatsoever. A decision I was half expecting, and it makes perfect sense for Jetblue to go seasonal at LGW and concentrate operations at LHR.

With competition from British Airways, Delta and Norse on the LGW to JFK route it makes me wonder whether STN would have been a better option for Jetblue.

I tend to agree and that someone needs to execute it again in the future. The A321neo long range variants help make these naturally thinner routes more economical. It's a shame Primera Air couldn't make it work, they had the right product but just tried to take on too much too soon.

When Cambridge South station opens for the biomedical campus that too should be a big draw for a direct US service again from STN, particularly Boston. There will also be a north/east London catchment for US flights which will favour a STN service. Emirates see this already with their Dubai connections. I think the main issue is most airlines perceive STN's customer experience exactly as it is and see the slots they get at congested airports as high value assets, so if they can get into LHR or LGW they will.

I've always thought LGW is too much the default for LHR overspill rather than it being a chosen alternative on a solid business case as such. Hopefully the future planned improvements at STN, and indeed LTN to some extent, will help put them on a more level playing field in providing some more healthy competition with LGW.

Is this the beginning of the end of JetBlue thanks to Carl Icahn?
 

Given JetBlue's recent change in ownership, i.e., the airline's acquisition by private equity with (in)famous Wall Street raider Carl Icahn of 1980s vintage now sitting on the airline's board (and probably breathing down Jetblue CEO Joanna Geraghty's neck), I can't help thinking that this is a replay of Icahn's TWA rule book.

Recalling what Icahn did to TWA, I wouldn't be surprised at all if making JetBlue's Gatwick routes and its second daily Paris CdG service (from / to JFK I presume) seasonal are just opening gambits for his end game, which would see JetBlue's Heathrow slots being sold for top dollar - just like he sold TWA's Heathrow slots to American 30-odd years ago, with JetBlue's remaining TATL service progressively run down and - depending on how the airline recovers from the costly fallout of its abandoned merger with ULCC Spirit, what will remain of it either being sold off to some one else or being shut down altogether.

On Thursday morning London Gatwick South Terminal was evacuated due to a fire alarm.

I won't go into the details as they are easily accessible elsewhere.

But one photo which got my attention is the one that I have attached.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d282f1870.jpeg

It looks as if passengers were on the former viewing balcony. With the view of Pier 2 and the tails of the aircraft it certainly looks like it was taken from the former viewing balcony.

If by any chance there was actually a fire I'm surprised that the passengers and I'm assuming staff as well would be directed to the roof of the building.

The other thing that got my attention was the view from the former viewing balcony. It doesn't look too unchanged from when it was previously open to the public. It's a shame that the former viewing balcony couldn't reopen.

I was always under the impression that the view was mostly obscured with all the construction since it was closed but obviously not going by the photo. If indeed it was taken on the former viewing balcony.

I agree with you my friend- hardly surprising, although at the same time, I'm gutted as well. At least they haven't cut LGW completely though. I too agree that they should have taken a look at STN - which could have made more sense for them (in addition to LHR). STN currently has no scheduled services to the US, the most recent of which ceased in October 2018 when Primera Air went bust. Perhaps they may take a look at STN ops when more A321-NEO deliveries start arriving?

We are now almost halfway through the year, and LGW has had several airline successes so far. I for one am very excited to see the inaugural SQ service to Singapore next month. Although Lufthansa are leaving (2nd time now) and Aer Lingus are no longer serving LGW. I wonder who we can expect next, both on the short and long haul front? :)