British Airways shrugged off threats of a fresh strike by cabin crew this week by starting new routes from Gatwick where its staff have worked throughout the dispute and nurtured the carrier’s revival at the airport.
BA began flights to Marrakech on Sunday and to San Juan in Puerto Rico – an island it last served in the late 1990s – on Monday, defying concern about the impact of Air Passenger Duty (APD).
Silla Maizey, BA’s managing director at Gatwick, said: “The landscape has changed here. There is a huge personal commit-ment to Gatwick among our staff and we are benefiting hugely from investment in the airport.”
BA has 3,500 staff at Gatwick, where the work practices and employment terms of cabin crew provide the model for contracts on which BA is recruiting at Heathrow.
Now the carrier is preparing to move into an extension at North Terminal that it believes will have as big an impact on passengers as Heathrow Terminal 5 – without the teething problems.
The new North Terminal will open in September, with BA promising a similar experience to T5 in the speed passengers pass through, but with more of a leisure feel. There will be security lanes for those with young children or requiring assistance, for example.
Maizey said: “We have a great relationship with new Gatwick owner Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) which allows us to do new things.” GIP took over from BAA in 2009.
BA’s presence at the UK’s biggest holiday airport appeared on the wane four years ago when it sold GB Airways to easyJet, which became the largest carrier at the airport. BA was focused on business traffic, Heathrow and Terminal 5.
However, the collapse in corporate travel following the 2008 financial crisis, coupled with a new owner at Gatwick, BA’s transatlantic partnership with American Airlines and merger with Iberia, and the ban on a third runway at Heathrow, transformed the situation.
Maizey said: “We now have two important airports.” Her appointment two months ago as BA’s first managing director at Gatwick marks the transformation.
She promises further new destinations, saying: “We’ll look at more premium leisure in the Caribbean and other premium leisure capacity.”
And she insisted BA had not modified its plans at Gatwick because of APD, saying: “We are pleased with the Budget freeze on APD – it shows the government is listening. But there remains a real issue.”
The changes on the ground at Gatwick have been allied to investment in technology at BA Holidays that has allowed extensive dynamic packaging by customers for the past year – all Atol-protected.
BA’s website will also display Gatwick-only pages from April in another signal of the West Sussex airport’s new importance to BA.
The carrier’s renewed focus on Gatwick comes as 74 UK business leaders attacked the government this week in a letter to The Times for not having an aviation strategy and for poor service levels at Heathrow.