London Gatwick Airport (LGW) Flight Compensation: Your Complete UK261 Rights Guide

UK261 compensation is determined solely by the great-circle distance of your flight route. Your ticket price has no bearing whatsoever on the amount you receive:

These amounts are per passenger, including children who occupied their own seat. A family of four delayed on a long-haul flight from Gatwick could recover £2,080 in total — regardless of whether their tickets cost £300 or £3,000.

Understanding Gatwick's unique operational constraints is essential for assessing your claim. The overwhelming majority of delays at LGW trace back, directly or indirectly, to the single-runway bottleneck — and this is overwhelmingly good news for claimants.

How 900 Flights Per Day Share One Runway

Gatwick manages approximately 900 aircraft movements every day on its single runway. By comparison, Heathrow handles a comparable volume across two fully operational runways, and most European airports of Gatwick's passenger throughput have two or three runways. The mathematics are unforgiving: Gatwick's runway operates at or near maximum capacity for the bulk of the operating day. There is effectively zero slack in the system.

When a runway operates at peak capacity, any disruption — however minor — cascades through the entire day's schedule. A single aircraft experiencing a technical issue while taxiing can block the queue and delay dozens of subsequent departures. A brief runway closure for debris clearance can produce a backlog that takes three or four hours to unwind. Even a slight delay in the morning departure bank compresses the schedule for every flight that follows.

Claim impact: Runway congestion and its cascading effects are categorically not extraordinary circumstances. Airlines select Gatwick as their operating base with full knowledge of the single-runway constraint. UK courts and the CAA have upheld this principle in hundreds of adjudications. Claims resulting from runway congestion at Gatwick are among the strongest in UK aviation law.

North Terminal and South Terminal: Ground-Side Bottlenecks

Gatwick's two terminals operate semi-independently but share all airside infrastructure. The North Terminal primarily serves British Airways, Virgin Atlantic, and long-haul carriers. The South Terminal is easyJet's stronghold and handles the majority of low-cost and charter flights. Passenger transfer between terminals requires a monorail journey, which adds complexity when flights are reboooked or gates reassigned. Stand availability — the physical parking positions for aircraft — is limited and frequently causes ground delays as aircraft wait for their gate to become free.

Claim impact: Terminal operations and stand management are entirely within the airport and airline's control. Gate allocation delays are never extraordinary circumstances.

The Standby Runway: A Misleading Safety Net

Gatwick technically possesses a second strip of tarmac — the former emergency runway, which has been redesignated as a taxiway and occasionally used for emergencies. There are long-standing proposals to bring this strip into regular commercial use, but as of now it is not operationally available for scheduled departures or arrivals. Airlines cannot cite the standby runway as evidence that Gatwick has adequate capacity.

Filing a compensation claim through Avioza takes less than three minutes and involves absolutely no upfront cost.

1. Collect your documentation — You need your booking confirmation or e-ticket, boarding pass (if available), and any communications from the airline regarding the disruption. Photographs of departure boards showing delays are useful supplementary evidence but not essential.

2. Check your eligibility — Use our online tool to enter your flight number and travel date. We instantly verify UK261 coverage, check the airline, calculate route distance, and confirm actual delay duration against official aviation records.

3. Submit your claim — Complete the claim form with your personal and banking details. Our specialist legal team takes over from here.

4. We manage everything — We contact the airline, present the legal basis for your claim, manage all correspondence, and counter any rejection. If the airline refuses to engage fairly, we escalate to the Civil Aviation Authority or file a county court claim on your behalf.

5. You receive payment — Once resolved, compensation is transferred directly to your bank account, less our success fee. If we do not win your case, you pay absolutely nothing.

Before compensation even enters the picture, airlines have immediate duty-of-care obligations when your flight is disrupted at Gatwick:

These obligations are separate from compensation and apply at Gatwick regardless of airline. If the airline refuses to provide care, purchase necessities yourself, retain all receipts, and reclaim the costs as a separate claim.

London Gatwick Airport is located in England (West Sussex), so the Limitation Act 1980 governs the filing deadline:

If you are a UK resident, your claim jurisdiction is normally determined by where you live, not where the airport is. However, for Gatwick departures, you can always rely on England's six-year limit since the cause of action arose in West Sussex.

Do not delay. Airlines routinely destroy operational data, maintenance logs, and crew records after two to three years. The earlier you file, the stronger your evidentiary position. Waiting until year five of a six-year window often means critical records have already been lost.

Gatwick's unique single-runway operation produces delay patterns that are exceptionally well-documented and highly predictable. This is excellent news for passengers — airlines have very limited valid defences for Gatwick disruptions.

• Deep Gatwick expertise — our team has processed thousands of claims originating at LGW and understands the specific operational data needed to disprove airline excuses
• No win, no fee — you bear absolutely zero financial risk throughout the entire process
• We challenge every excuse — when easyJet cites generic "operational issues" or BA blames "late inbound aircraft," we examine actual NATS data, METAR reports, and airport logs
• Rapid processing — most Gatwick claims are resolved within six to eight weeks
• Full escalation capability — if the airline refuses to engage, we take the claim through the CAA complaints process and, if necessary, to county court with a proven track record of success