Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin London City Airport has completed its two-year retail overhaul. Shown here is Lagardère's anchor ..
. [+] Aelia Duty Free store. Kevin Rozario London City Airport—just a few miles from the financial districts of Canary Wharf and the City of London—has upgraded its departure lounge with a “significant investment” supported by several retail tenants in the hope of lifting revenue from rising passenger numbers.
The timing of the revamp is good as the British capital’s most central air gateway has just been green-lighted for expansion of its services. Earlier in August, the U.K.
government granted an uplift on the passenger cap from 6.5 million to nine million per year by 2031. The approval was helped by the airport’s planning application indicating that there would be no increase in infrastructure or a rise in the permitted number of annual flights.
The application also included a commitment that only cleaner, quieter, next-gen aircraft would be allowed to fly in any extended operating periods; a first for a U.K. airport.
Though well-connected to the capital, London City is nowhere near its initial cap. The gateway is still building back the passengers it lost during the pandemic and, last year, traffic hit 3.4 million, well short of the 5.
1 million seen in 2019. The mix has shifted from mostly business then, to more than half now traveling for leisure and to visit friends and family. The departures upgrade reflec.