London Gatwick Airport
Facts on LGW
Gatwick describes itself as the busiest single-runway airport in Europe, funneling huge volumes of traffic through just one main runway.
Source: Gatwick Airport (official site)
Gatwick's name is older than any airport: it comes from a manor first recorded in 1241 as "Gatwik", in the parish of Charlwood, Surrey, whose name derives from the Old English gāt (goat) and wīc (dairy farm) — literally a 'goat farm'. Gatwick Manor House stood where the North Terminal's aircraft taxiing area is today and was owned by the de Gatwick family until the 19th century.
The descendants of the Gatwick manor that gave the airport its name sold the land in 1890 to the newly formed Gatwick Race Course Company, which opened a racecourse there the following year; when an aerodrome was established on the adjoining Hunts Green Farm land in the late 1920s, it inherited the Gatwick name from the racecourse and manor before it.
Gatwick's original 1936 terminal, nicknamed "the Beehive" for its circular shape, is recognized as the world's first integrated airport building to combine check-in, control tower and boarding under one roof; it's now a Grade II*-listed building.
Source: National Transport Trust
During the Second World War the airfield was requisitioned by the military and known as RAF Gatwick, before reverting to civilian use once the war ended and the airport proper was rebuilt in the mid-1950s.
Source: Wikipedia
A transit system opened in 1983 to link the main terminal (now South Terminal) to a new circular satellite pier was the UK's first automated people-moving system, years before the North Terminal shuttle followed in 1987.
Source: Wikipedia
Gatwick's two runways sit only 656 feet (200 metres) apart, too close for simultaneous use, so the northern runway serves only as a taxiway and can only take flights when the main runway is closed.
Source: Wikipedia
In 2015, Gatwick became the first single-runway airport in the world to handle more than 40 million passengers in a single year, and until March 2017 it also ran the world's busiest single-use runway.
Source: Wikipedia
Drone sightings near the runway shut Gatwick down for about 36 hours from 19 to 21 December 2018, stranding roughly 110,000 passengers and disrupting 760 flights; the army was called in to help police resolve it.
Source: Wikipedia
The state-owned British Airports Authority and its successor BAA ran Gatwick from 1966 until 2009, when it was sold to a Global Infrastructure Partners-led consortium for £1.51 billion, ending more than four decades of state-linked ownership.
Source: Wikipedia