British Airways has recently announced that it will be closing its Gatwick Airport base on account of the coronavirus crisis. With the ongoing challenges and restrictions within the market environment, the airline decided to suspend the flying schedule indefinitely. They have been contacting their customers to be able to discuss their options.

Apparently, Gatwick has been a secondary base for British Airways with lesser flights and more focus on leisure than Heathrow. Only about 33 flights that had been due take off or land at West Sussex airport on 31 March. This move reveals the reality that scheduled services both to and from Gatwick have reportedly been canceled until any further notice.

 The airport had two arrivals of repatriation of flights coming from Lima in Peru. Staff for the ground operations will continue to work for the maintenance of the airline and to keep it ready when the services resume.

Reportedly, British Airways has continued to fly a number of flights both to and from Heathrow, with several departures to Gibraltar, Lisbon, Stuttgart, Manchester, Frankfurt, Budapest and Reykjavik. Gatwick had been the busiest runway worldwide in the previous month and will be closing its North Terminal. It will keep its runway open to all the scheduled flights from 2 pm to 10 pm every day in April.

EasyJet, Gatwick’s biggest airline had also made an announcement that it will be grounding all of its 344 aircraft in the UK due to the pandemic. The third-largest airline in Gatwick, Norwegian has also grounded most of its operations following British Airways and EasyJet.

The airports have been responding to all the decisions taken by the carriers and suspended most of the flights as there has been an ostensible decline in the demand across the world, with the countries imposing travel restrictions to slow down the coronavirus spread.

London City Airport has also closed down its runways to both private and commercial flights whereas Southend is open 3 days a week.

Source Credit- https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/coronavirus-british-airways-gatwick-airport-closure-heathrow-a9437036.html