Gatwick gives notice of emergency exercise

People planning to travel from Gatwick Airport on March 5th have been informed that an emergency exercise will be carried out at the base.

The exercise will take place between 19:00 and 22:00 GMT and is designed to test plans that have been put in place to deal with a major fuel leak.

While the airport stressed that the likelihood of such an event is low, contingency plans are a legal requirement.

Passengers and the public should not be affected although some people may notice additional emergency service activity around the airport.

Airport operator BAA recently revealed passenger statistics for January 2008, with Gatwick one of the few hubs to report a year-on-year increase in traffic.

This was attributed to a 22.4 per cent increase in the number of people travelling to Ireland and a 5.6 per cent rise in European scheduled traffic.

In total, BAA's UK airports handled 10.1 million passengers in January, two per cent down on the previous year.