London Gatwick ready to deliver smoother journeys and faster security ahead of peak summer season

SussexWorld

London Gatwick is preparing to welcome millions of passengers over the school summer holidays, with smoother journeys now made even easier thanks to new security technology. We spoke to Nick Williams, Head of Passenger Operations and Service, to talk about the summer season, the new security process, the busiest day, l the departure lounge refurbishments and the ne destinations you can fly to from Gatwick this summer

Transcript

00:00I'm Nick Williams and I'm Head of Passenger Operations at London Gatwick.

00:07We've had a great start to the summer but we're obviously now getting to the sort of

00:14point where the school holidays start and we will get to our busiest time of the year so

00:18we're really looking forward to that we're really well set we've been working hard behind the scenes

00:23to be ready and we've had a good start to the summer and we can't wait to see passengers come

00:27through during the summer holidays at London Gatwick.

00:34I think the biggest thing is that in security now passengers will be able to leave their

00:39liquids of up to 100 mil and electronics in their bag when they pass through security so making it

00:45really simple and really efficient and already this year 98 percent of passengers pass through

00:51security in five minutes or less and we know that this this improvement in being able to leave

00:56that their stuff in their bags it's just going to make it even easier so that's probably the first

01:01big improvement and the second big improvement will be in our departure lounges so we've we've made

01:06sort of a significant investment inside both departure lounges to upgrade them there's more

01:12seating in both of them more charging points for passengers and there's been a lot of retail

01:16development as well so we've got a whole host of new brands the passengers won't have seen at London

01:21Gatwick before so such as pizza express brew dog alongside some of the others that have been here

01:28for for longer

01:33yeah we've seen we've seen really uh positive signs uh since we've sort of rolled this out

01:38um and just just that ability to leave uh those liquids of up to 100 mil and electronics in your bag

01:44we can see is taking the stress out of that that process for passengers we've always been really

01:49good at security at london gatwick and passengers have passed through really quickly already so we

01:53think this is going to make the process even better

01:59yeah so at this time of year we have passengers flying to uh sort of european uh places like

02:05barcelona majorca and but we've recently launched routes to uganda kenya and bahrain so there are 222

02:14destinations that passengers can fly from from gatwick so the the the network is really huge so um so

02:20we're really proud of that

02:25yeah so sunday the 17th uh we're expecting to be the busiest day um but the the rest of the days

02:31through august are also very very busy um so whilst we have a busiest day the reality is the whole of

02:37the summer holidays are very very busy for us at almost kind of the same level

02:44um i think my my three top tips would be to plan your journey um so whether that would be by road

02:51or by rail um arrive on time it's really important passengers arrive on time for their for their check-in

02:57time which is uh described to them by their airlines and then three i think to get ready for our new

03:02security experience so to be ready to leave your liquids up to 100 mil and your electronics in your bag

03:08and really benefit from what we've just described as a better experience

03:16i think we're constantly looking at kind of uh investing in the airport for to improve the

03:21experience as i sort of touched on we've uh we've invested in some more self-service bag drops in

03:26check-in uh in south terminal um and we'll continue to do that as well as continuing to invest in

03:33uh the departure lounges and gate rooms because we know passengers really value that that investment

Category

Transcript

Recommended