The European scheduled market was the airport’s best performing, with year-on-year growth of 14.5% to just over 1m passengers.
Next best was UK/Channel Islands, up 3.5% at 277.5k, followed by long-haul excluding the North Atlantic, up 2.8% at 414k passengers.
In contrast Ireland traffic dropped 11% year-on-year to 97.9k passengers, while European charter was down 20.7% at 195.8k and North Atlantic down 29.8% at 128.1k.
Gatwick blamed the European charter fall both on reduced demand and the consolidation of services by some of the airport’s main leisure carriers.
North Atlantic routes, meanwhile, continue to be affected by the impact of the EU-US open skies agreement, which has seen leading US carriers transfer their services to Heathrow.
For 2009 as a whole, Gatwick passenger numbers dropped 5.3% to 32.37m, with a recovery during the final quarter insufficient to offset the declines seen in the first nine months of the year.
There were only two growth markets during 2009: European scheduled (+5.6% at 15.35m passengers) and Ireland (+0.1% at 1.43m).
Passenger numbers on UK/Channel Island routes fell by 2% to 3.67m and long-haul excluding the North Atlantic by 3.1% to 4.53m.
European charter passengers were down 18.9% from 2008 at 5.21m, while North Atlantic routes brought up the rear with a fall of 35.4% to 2.18m.
Stewart Wingate, Gatwick chief executive, commented: ‘I am pleased to end the year with a third consecutive month of growth in passenger numbers which demonstrates that Gatwick Airport is recovering well from the economic downturn.
‘While overall annual passenger numbers were lower than in 2008, the newly independent Gatwick Airport will compete strongly to become the airport of choice for airlines and passengers in 2010 and beyond.’
Gatwick was sold by BAA at the end of last year to Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a $5.6bn independent investment fund that also has a 75% ownership interest in London City Airport.
See also:
European airline traffic Dec/FY09 (13/01/2010)
Heathrow/Edinburgh BAA’s standout performers (11/01/2010)
easyJet continues Gatwick expansion (11/01/2010)
European airline traffic Dec/FY09 (07/01/2010)
Former Stansted boss takes over at Gatwick (04/12/2009)
BAA sells Gatwick for £1.51bn (21/10/2009)