This Sunday, the South Terminal at London's Gatwick Airport
will reopen to the public after nearly two years closed.
And I figured that reopening would just be a case of the team here
turning the lights back on, dusting off some equipment,
and getting back to business.
But from talking to the folks who are getting everything ready,
it turns out that mothballing an entire airport terminal for 18 months
and then reopening it again
is much more difficult than you might think.
- In March 2020 when the pandemic struck, we obviously realized
there was going to be a significant downturn in traffic.
So we took the decision to close one of our terminals.
Gatwick Airport would generally see
upwards of 900 movements off of our runway on a busy summer day.
During the height of the pandemic, we were down to two or three flights a day
with certainly less than 500 passengers on certain days.
I think it's fair to say,
in March 2020 we all thought it'd be over in two weeks' time.
- If the terminal had been shut down for just a week, or maybe a month,
then yes, things would probably have just kept ticking over.
But there's some point at which upkeep is required.
In the same way that you're not meant to leave a car sitting unused
for more than a couple of weeks,
the mechanical parts in things like the baggage belts and jetbridges
need to be run, tested, and maintained regularly,
or they might not start up ever again.
Closing the terminal does reduce costs, yes,
but it doesn't make them zero.
- There's a number of core services we've had to keep running.
We had to do regular maintenance and safety checks on all of our
passenger boarding bridges and airfield equipment.
Water systems, lighting systems, power, fire, life safety systems,
everything that's there to look after the people and keep everyone safe.
But things like, you know,
heating and lighting in various areas nd power for escalators and lifts,
they were all shut down.
Mainly to save money during the crisis, we had to make cuts wherever possible.
We've been taking the opportunity to use the space for filming.
Film companies have been coming in and doing various shows around the airport.
Some of which, I think, will be airing in the next few weeks.
A large number of our workforce had been furloughed,
and since the 1st of October, we've had everyone back in
to get the airport back up and running.
Now as passenger numbers start to grow, we are actively recruiting
and we need to increase our workforce by a significant number.
We're reopening 85% of it straight away.
We've got a phased plan for our airlines
moving back over from North Terminal over three days,
but all the infrastructure will come online more or less from day one.
In terms of a challenge?
Yeah, it's the biggest one I've done at Gatwick airport.
It's been open for 60-odd years,
that's now been closed for the best part of two years.
You know, buildings don't react too well to that sort of thing.
The scale of what we're doing here is...
we've often likened it to opening a smaller airport,
completely from scratch.
It is a huge task that we're undertaking.
I'm feeling really confident, actually.
I think we're in a really good place to do it.
- The first flight from the South Terminal
is scheduled to leave on Sunday in the early hours of the morning.
So it'll probably be about 3am when the first passengers go through the doors.
And they probably won't know or care
that the terminal's only just opened again:
they'll just want to get to their destination.
If everything goes to plan,
they probably won't even know that the terminal was ever closed.