Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast, the very last one of August 2024.

It's Friday the 30th of August.

I'm talking today about, well, how a year ago there were thousands of people out of position

having their flights cancelled as a result of the air traffic control failure that happened on August

bank holiday Monday the 28th of August last year. That was absolutely miserable for them

but it also focused attention on Gatwick Airport and that is where I would like to pick up today's broadcast.

I am lucky enough to be at international arrivals at Gatwick Airport.

The 28th of August, well that might ring a bell if you were trying to travel.

We saw the failure of the Nats air traffic

control computer and its backup system in the middle of what was going to be one of the busiest

days of the year. We had 2,000 flights approximately cancelled, 300,000 people had their travel plans messed up.

It cost the airline's many millions of pounds.

And then on another 28th, this was the 28th of June this year, Gatwick itself was in a bit of a pickle

because an aircraft at British Airways departure

for Vancouver unfortunately had a problem on the runway. The runway was blocked immediately.

A whole range of diversions and cancellations took effect. Very messy. That's what you get if you are the busiest single runway

airport in the world, which Gatwick is. They get an amazing amount of capacity out of this

single runway, but it would be so much better if they had another runway in terms of the resilient so

if things go wrong you've got a bit more to work with because if your only runway is going to get

blocked then well here we come luten standstead heath row bornmouth even in one case, I think Brussels on the Emirates diversion.

The airport itself, of course, would love a second runway because, well, that way, you can handle many more passengers

and it would mean that you would make more money, which if you're an infrastructure company like Vancey,

...