2022 was neither the best of times nor the worst of times for London's Gatwick and Heathrow airports.
Both can point to a better 2022 compared with the previous two years. On March 16, Gatwick announced a £195.2 million profit in 2022 as passenger numbers topped 32 million, around 70% of the pre-Covid level.
An hour or so drive to the north and west, London Heathrow had three weeks earlier reported a loss of £700 million despite around 62 million passengers in 2022. Heathrow's loss was, all the same, a big improvement on 2021, when it lost £1.2bn. The gain of a half a million pounds was down in part to a post-lockdown traffic surge that the airport's management boasted "was equivalent to fitting virtually all of Frankfurt’s 2022 passengers" inside its five terminals.
"Feedback from the vast majority of passengers was that they received great service, and we were pleased to be named best airport in Europe”, the airport said.
Heathrow’ chief executive John Holland-Kaye, who in early 2023 announced his resignation, said “2022 may have been a year of recovery, but 2023 is shaping up to be a year of renewal for Heathrow.”
"I couldn’t be prouder of how far team Heathrow has come in my nine years as CEO – from transforming customer service, to securing parliamentary approval for expansion to surviving two years of border closures and rebuilding the business,” the soon-to-depart Holland-Kaye added, commenting on a year when a passenger number cap was imposed due to staff shortages at the airport.
Heathrow’s 2022 revenue of £2.9bn was in turn up on the previous year, which was totted up at just over £1.2bn. Gatwick’s return to profit came after heavy losses of over £800 million over 2020 and 2021.
Despite returning to profit, Gatwick’s chief executive Stuart Wingate said the south London hub still has "some way to go" before it recovers from the impact of the Covid pandemic travel curbs.
The Vinci-operated airport reported EBIDTA of £446.3 million and revenue of £776.6 million, which were"driven by a strong and steady recovery in passenger numbers" and included aeronautical income of £405 million, retail income of £159 million and car parking income of £102 million.
Short-haul flying was back to 92% of 2019, with long-haul lagging at 76%, measured in the number of flights in and out of the airport.
The airport said it made "a significant investment" in 2022 to resurface a runway "in half the time and for half the cost of traditional methods" and said the efficiency of the airport would be further improved in 2023 by a revamped train station and by the addition of new routes and carriers, including Air India and the returning Delta Air Lines.
The following week, as warnings were sounded about Heathrow workers going on strike over the Easter 2023 holiday, Gatwick was announcing the addition of a route to Jeddah.
But where there is gain, there is sometimes loss. Gatwick’s statements came around a week before Aer Lingus was to end its service from the airport to Knock in the west of Ireland. The IAG-owned carrier said Knock would instead be served from Heathrow, despite Irish rival Ryanair already operating Knock-London Stansted and Knock-London Luton routes.
Aer Lingus said the move to Heathrow, which was given a strong push by Irish tourism officials, would bring more visitors to the west of the country. Both the carrier and the tourism bodies said they hoped somehow to cash in on the international success of The Banshees of Inisherin, the Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson film that was shot about an hour's drive from Knock.
But the move was criticised on both sides of the Irish Sea for ditching the direct route linking south London and south of England to Ireland’s west and replacing it with a route to the bigger and busier Heathrow that, compared to Gatwick, arguably offers worse access to central London.