London Gatwick’s chief financial officer was encouraged by the interim results published this week and believes growth will continue in the coming years.

The interim financial results showed 20m passengers used the airport in first half of year, and at £491m, revenue was up on same period last year, driven by growth in airport, traffic and property charges.

Profit was also up at £129m, with EBITDA at £262m.

And the results come just ahead of a critical Government decision on the airport’s Northern Runway planning application, following the Secretary of State for Transport’s letter in February stating she was ‘minded to grant consent’ for the airport’s plans. A final decision is expected by 27 October.

London Gatwick CFO Jim Butler | Picture: Justin Lambert

placeholder image — London Gatwick CFO Jim Butler | Picture: Justin Lambert

Gatwick CFO Jim Butler told us: “I was very encouraged by the fact that we grew about a half percent this year in the first half but I’m more encouraged by the discussions we're having with a lot of airlines.

“As I look forward I think we've got a healthy set of growth to continue in the coming years and we're obviously optimistic about the answer on the Northern Runway which will transform the airport going forward.”

Chief executive Stewart Wingate was also pleased with the result “I think they are a solid set of results for the first half of the year,” he said. “I think the main takeaways would be passenger volumes. 20 million passengers which is up half a percentage point on the period last year - we're growing.

“Revenues of £491 million pounds giving an EBITDA of £262 million finishing up with profit of £129 million.

“And of course we've made investments in the airport this year so far this year of £82 million and we expect to see the investment grow in the second half of the year.”

The results also show Gatwick has significantly improved on-time performance and Mr Wingate believes they have shown real leadership with what they have done.

“On the on-time performance, It's really a collaborative approach between ourselves and our airport partners, particularly the airlines and also NATS [National Air Traffic Services], with some of the things that we have put in place this year which have driven this improvement.

“The way in which we've worked with our airline partners is for them to basically make sure that everything that is in their control and our control on the ground is done well, so in other words we've got the aircraft fully boarded with all of the luggage and all of the passengers on time on the ground and we've really made strides forward - we call it ‘ready to go’.

“I think it's fair to say that we and the airlines have really done quite a neat job on that.”

Mr Wingate added: “In addition to that working with NATS we've put in place a world first which is basically they put in place time-based separation for the aircraft as they approach the runway rather than using distance markers so this is the first time that actually been implemented at a single runway airport anywhere in the world.

“So it's a real leadership position, we implemented it just at the beginning of the spring and that's working really well in terms of optimizing the flow on the runway.”