Which long haul destinations can you fly from London Gatwick airport?

In 2023, London Gatwick airport announced its 50th long haul destination as Ethiopian Airlines returned with direct flights to Addis Ababa.

Two years on, that figure hasn’t moved although the exact distribution of routes has changed as airlines tweak their route networks.

There are flights to 190 destinations scheduled from Gatwick in August, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium, which is three more routes than in 2023. Overall capacity is projected to be 103.3% of 2019 levels, with a total of 5,110,393 million seats available.

Whilst a large percentage of passengers will be flying to Europe and other short haul destinations, the airport has a surprisingly large contingent of longer routes.

This is for a number of reasons including additional passenger choice (eg Emirates) or simply because Heathrow is congested and Gatwick has the slots available to operate these services (eg the new Singapore Airlines Gatwick flights).

This got me thinking that it would be interesting to see a full list of long haul routes operated from Gatwick in one place. I delved into Cirium’s data to identify all long haul routes operated in 2025.

It is interesting to note the strength of TUI, an airline that we rarely cover on HfP.

Below is the full list of long haul destinations you can fly to from Gatwick, but before that I thought we’d see which routes we have lost and gained since we last ran this article in 2023.

New routes since 2023 include:

• Bahrain – Gulf Air, flies 3x weekly
• Bangkok – British Airways, launched last year
• Bengaluru – Air India
• Guangzhou – China Southern
• Halifax, Canada – WestJet
• Islamabad – British Airways, flights have moved from Heathrow
• La Romana, Dominican Republic – TUI
• Lagos – Air Peace
• Singapore – Singapore Airlines, I reviewed the inaugural flight here
• Zhengzhou – China Southern

Dropped routes since 2023 include:

• Calgary – WestJet
• Georgetown, Guyana – British Airways, shortlived as it was only launched in 2022
• Grenada – British Airways
• Hanoi – Bamboo Airways, which has pulled back from long haul services
• Ho Chi Minh City – Bamboo Airways
• Ilha Do Sal, Cape Verde – TUI
• Khartoum, Sudan – Badr
• Liberia, Costa Rica – TUI
• San Francisco – Norse Atlantic
• St Kitts – British Airways
• Tobago – British Airways
• Washington Dulles – Norse Atlantic

Here are the long-haul routes operating from London Gatwick at some point in 2025. Note that BA’s tag services in the Caribbean are excluded as they are not non-stop. With easyJet et al now running 5-6 hour flights on their standard aircraft you can also argue about where the ‘long haul’ line should be drawn.

London Gatwick eyes future growth

Gatwick will no doubt hope it can increase this figure if plans to bring its Northern Runway, currently a taxiway, into use are approved. A final decision is not expected until later this year, although transport minister Heidi Alexander said the government was “minded to approve” the project.

Per the Gatwick website:

“The Northern Runway is currently limited to acting as a taxiway, only available when the Main Runway is out of use. The planning application proposes repositioning the centre line of the Northern Runway 12 metres north to allow dual runway operations, aligning with international safety standards.

Construction could start in 2025 and be completed and ready for operational use by the end of the decade. The proposals are low impact, with most construction taking place within the current airport boundary.

Bringing the Northern Runway into routine use alongside the Main Runway would unlock new capacity and allow for a more efficient and resilient operation. If approved the £2.2 billion privately financed plan would be one of the largest capital investment projects in the region for decades. And it would help the airport meet future passenger demand by serving around 75 million passengers a year by the late 2030s.”

Clearly, with the plans still to receive approval, timelines are already slipping and it’s unlikely we’ll see construction start this year.

Even if planning approval is granted, a two-runway Gatwick Airport would not be able to rival Heathrow as the Northern Runway would be significantly shorter. This would restrict it to being used by smaller aircraft during peak hours of operation.