More exotic holidays from Gatwick likely following airport sale

An investment fund that bought Gatwick Airport this week is understood to be planning to offer more long-haul holidays from the southeast hub when the sale is complete.

Global Infrastructure Partners, an investment fund that also owns London City Airport, this week agreed to buy Gatwick from BAA, which also owns Heathrow, Stansted and four other airports in the UK.

Critics of BAA have long complained that the airport operator viewed Gatwick as a poor relation to Heathrow which, as the UK's largest and most important airport for business traffic, received the greatest investment.

New owners Global Infrastructure is believed to want to attract more holidaymakers to Gatwick, the UK's second largest airport, rather than compete aggressively with Heathrow for business travellers.

It is expected to make a promise to airlines that it will invest in the airport to improve facilities in order to encourage airlines to offer more long-haul flights while also adding more budget airlines offering cheap flights to Europe.

The new owners are expected push for a second runway at Gatwick to allow the airport to expand beyond its current limit of 45 million passengers a year.

Another runway would allow Gatwick to almost double the number of passengers to more than 80 million a year, but current legislation prevents the airport from adding a second runway until 2019 at the earliest.

The sale of Gatwick ends BAA's monopoly of southeast airports, but the airport operator has been told by the Competition Commission that it must also sell either Glasgow or Edinburgh Airport.

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