Gatwick trip

(This is going to be a longer than normal post!)

Recently I was offered a trip to look around all of Gatwick- I jumped at the opportunity! I went down last night and stayed over, this morning I met up with Dawn Elson at 9.00 who is head of engineering at Gatwick- we had a coffee and a chat about general aviation for about an hour, Dawn is very down to earth for a person who manages 125,000 'assets' (anything which belongs to the airport and known as such) and 1250 staff, her time is valuable and I was lucky to get the opportunity to talk with her, Dawn is ex RAF and has recently won awards for her business skills, she gave me some good knowledge and understanding of aviation, we then went and met her team, some of whom I had seen on 'Inside Gatwick'- the program shown on Sky.

Firstly Tony showed me around the new developments at Gatwick, (after dressing up in all of the health and safety gear- which there was plenty), this was very interesting to see future projects being made, there are going to be some great new features at Gatwick soon!

Then I met up with Simon, we went for a tour of the newly refurbished south terminal (lounges, immigration, baggage reclaim, restaurants, shops etc), it was interesting to walk around with the person who had an input into making the renovation, the thought process and detail is truly immense and it is designed to vastly improve passenger experience -however Gatwick makes no secret that it is designed also to maximize revenue, the walk ways, lighting, signs are all there to get you spending, Gatwick makes about 60p pp (did you know when you buy anything in an airport and they ask to see your boarding pass, that is only to record which flights make the airport money and which do not, nothing to do with tax or security!). We then went to the North terminal which also soon going to get some TLC like the south and I was shown what is going to go where.

Side note-One thing I did learn, if you wear a high vis in the terminal, the passengers instantly think you are apart of the 'team', 3 times I was asked were something was- a blank faced looked back at them!

I then went and had lunch with Ian, we talked through various elements and challenges of keeping an active airport operational, there are so many variable to running an airport and Ian and his team have to face many hurdles e.g. Gatwick flooding on Xmas eve. Fines can be issued if anything goes wrong, up to £100,000 worth if the tram stopped for example, the devil is in the detail! I then went upstairs and was shown the future plans of Gatwick- they probably won't like me repeating what I viewed so I won't -but all I can say is Gatwick has some BIG and exciting plans for all involved.... some of which are not far away. 

I met back up with Simon for the airfield tour, I was very much looking forward to this, after passing through many security checklists we were cleared onto an active airfield with 777's and a320s taxing being our other traffic on the taxi ways... a surreal experience- Gatwick has 55 movements per hour and with Easyjet overall being 48% of those.

 This was built off site and then wheeled in and erected!

 Emirates departs for warmer climates.

 Stood down this year- this is only about 20% of the overall kit, it cost Gatwick £2 million per day to be shut because of snow, hence investment in kit.

I have many more pictures but not much more space! We were on the airfield for about 1 hour and drove around all of the stands, seeing them from ground level was an eye opener, everything seems much bigger!

The last 'asset' I was shown was the boiler room- each boiler of which there are 9... ish... is equivalent to 500 of our household boilers, they cost £3 million per year to run and circulate water around all of the terminals and buildings at Gatwick at 143 degrees, hot enough to cause serious injury if a leak occurred! They are all gas fed but this is to change soon. BTW Gatwick electricity bill is around £10 million per year... ouch.

 Boilers- big!

 Getting toasty in there!

By now it was 4.00 and time to leave, for an avid aviation enthusiast it was an eye opening experience- Gatwick is vast and I probably only really viewed about 10% of Gatwick- all of which was very interesting. I would like to thanks Dawn, Tony, Simon and Ian for a memorable day where I have learn some very useful information, I have missed a lot of detail in this blog but there simply isn't space!

I start Oxford next week!