Gatwick Airport sale completed

The sale of Gatwick Airport was finally completed late last week after Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) led the consortium to the £1.51 billion acquisition. GIP, who owns a controlling 75 per cent of London City Airport, said they plan to modernise the UK’s second largest airport to cope with the growing demand as more travellers use the facilities. Some of Britain’s largest carriers like Easyjet and British Airways have major hubs there and the firm is keen to keep them moving the right direction.

Although they plan to move the airport into the 21st century they are for the time being restricted by constraints that will not let them build on new land. A new runway would help alleviate some of the pressure, but that can not even be spoken about until after 2019. Instead GIP will work on the check-in halls and try to reduce queues by making better use of the space for a better experience for all their passengers.

The former owners of Gatwick, BAA, were investigated by the Competitions Commission (CC) because they owned seven major UK airports. While the inquiry was on going they decided to put Gatwick on the market to potential buyers. They have also been ordered to sell Stansted as well either Glasgow or Edinburgh airports by the CC. in 2008 the airport handled more than 34 million passengers and it looks like that number will start to rise again as the world flying market begins to stabalise.