Gatwick Airport today reported revenue of £470 million for the six months to the end of September, an increase of 5.5 per cent.
Combined with carefully controlled cost management, this resulted in EBITDA up 9.9 per cent to £290 million and a profit before tax of £140 million, the airport said.
At the same time, Gatwick has continued to increase its lead as the world’s busiest single-runway airport with passenger numbers up 5.1 per cent on last year.
The airport has further extended its global connectivity, with long haul routes up 12.4 per cent versus the same six months last year.
Before the end of the financial year Gatwick will add further global connections to Taipei, Buenos Aires, Chicago, and Austin, building on new routes to Singapore, Rwanda, Seattle and Denver in the last six months.
Stewart Wingate, chief executive, Gatwick Airport, said: “Gatwick has blazed a trail in the last six months delivering record growth in passenger numbers and record-breaking new long-haul routes while also setting new standards for customer service.
“Gatwick now serves 45.5 million passengers each year and is playing a vital role for Britain.
“As we prepare for Brexit, it is critical that we continue to grow our long-haul links in addition to connections within the UK and Europe.
“Our results show significant cargo growth on the back of our ever-strengthening long haul network.
“We have ambitious plans to build on these results to reach 50 million passengers per year and beyond which will further set the standard for a single runway airport.”
The six-month period to the end of September 2017 was the busiest in Gatwick’s history, with 26.4 million passengers, an increase of 5.1 per cent or 1.3 million passengers on the previous year.
Gatwick’s growth is a combination of more planes, bigger planes and fuller planes – each aircraft at Gatwick is carrying four more passengers, on average, than last year.
The airport also achieved its busiest day ever on September 1st, with 950 aircraft movements.