July 18th - The summer rush begins for the UK's airports
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the summer rush gets fully under way, I'm at London Gatwick talking to Nick Williams, head of passenger operations at the world's busiest single-runway airport. On a really busy day, there are more than 900 take-offs and landings: around 50 in a typical hour, or one every 72 seconds. The wait for security, says Nick, is rarely more than five minutes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Thursday, |
| 0:06.3 | the 18th of July, and I'm back on one of my favourite perches, which is on the upper four-quarter |
| 0:12.8 | Gatwick Airport, North Terminal, that you've got lots of people pining off the inter-terminal |
| 0:19.0 | shuttle and everyone heading off on their holidays, we hope. |
| 0:23.1 | But how's it going to work out? That's a question I'd like to put to Nick Williams, who is |
| 0:27.4 | head of passenger operations at Gatwick Airport. Hello, Nick. Thank you for joining us. |
| 0:33.3 | How are you feeling just ahead of the busiest weekend, presumably, for about five years? |
| 0:39.0 | Yes, Simon. It's a really busy weekend coming up and actually it's going to be a really busy |
| 0:43.0 | 10 weeks. So we are right back up at the levels that we saw pre-pandemic. And this is where we sort of |
| 0:48.8 | thrive at London Gatwick. So it's really exciting to be looking ahead of a really busy summer, so we can't wait to get going. |
| 0:56.0 | Can I put to you a few of the things that people are going to be concerned about ahead of their trips? |
| 1:02.0 | There's been lots and lots of confusion about aviation security and these new machines, which were supposed to sort out all our liquids and laptops problems |
| 1:13.1 | by this summer and that hasn't happened obviously there's lots of reports at other airports |
| 1:18.6 | of very long waits for security how are people going to find it here so i think firstly in terms |
| 1:23.3 | of queue times at security London gatwick has a world-class security operation. So we have over |
| 1:29.3 | 95% of passengers that will move through security in less than five minutes. So we have a really |
| 1:35.8 | quick security operation for passengers. In relation to the liquids piece, the guidance to passengers |
| 1:41.9 | is really simple for London Gatwick. It's just to prepare for security |
| 1:46.6 | in the way that you always have done. So if you've got your laptops or your tablets, take them out of your |
| 1:51.3 | bag, and if you've got your liquids under 100 mil, put them in a clear bag, put them in your tray, |
| 1:57.5 | and actually our teams will support passengers as they arrive so it's really simple |
| 2:01.6 | prepare for security as you always have you're talking me out of paying extra for fast track here |
... |
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