London Gatwick Airport

Gatwick's circular art-deco 'Beehive' terminal opened in 1936, notable for a covered subway linking it directly to the adjoining railway station — an early precursor to modern integrated air-rail travel.

Following mid-1950s redevelopment, Gatwick reopened on 9 June 1958 with a modern pier-based terminal (later South Terminal), among the first enclosed, jet-age pier terminals in the world.

A satellite pier addition introduced the UK's first automated inter-terminal transit system, later expanded into today's people-mover network linking the terminals.

The North Terminal was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in March 1988, giving Gatwick a second full terminal and substantially increasing capacity.

Following a UK competition ruling against BAA's ownership of multiple London airports, Gatwick was sold in December 2009 to Global Infrastructure Partners for £1.51 billion.

In 2015, Gatwick became the first single-runway airport in the world to handle more than 40 million passengers in a year, a record it continued to build on.

Repeated drone sightings near the runway from 19–21 December 2018 shut down the airport for roughly 36 hours, disrupting around 1,000 flights and some 140,000 passengers in one of the UK's most disruptive aviation security incidents; no perpetrator was ever conclusively identified, and the episode remains disputed in some details.

French infrastructure group VINCI Airports completed acquisition of a 50.01% majority shareholding in Gatwick, with Global Infrastructure Partners retaining a minority stake.