Quote:
Originally Posted by thenry
Could Gatwick take some of the load allowing Heathrow to rethink its heavily loaded airport or would Gatwick take on totally different flights?
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Totally different flights. Gatwick (for the most part) handles point to point holiday flights. Heathrow however deals with interlineing "hub and spoke" type flights (when people fly in from 1 part of the world just to fly out again to another destination with the airline).
The ability to interline is VERY important to an airline and that requires most of the airlines hardwere to fly from one place (as well as their partner airlines).
For example to make gatwick as valuable to BA as heathrow is you would need to move the entire BA opperation to gatwick along with the opperations of ALL one world partners. which even with a second runway would simply transfer the capacity issue from heathrow to gatwick.
Landing slots (something that many airports give away) are sooo valuable at heathrow that BA brought an entire alirline (BMI) JUST to get hold of its landing rights.