These will be 10-car trains newly formed from refurbished SWT and former Gatwick Express rolling stock.

National Express services 025 from London Victoria to Gatwick Airport and Brighton, and 027 from Victoria to Chichester also serve Wallington.

In 1996 the group acquired its first UK rail franchises, Gatwick Express and Midland Mainline.

In June 2008 Gatwick Express was absorbed into Southern franchise

British Rail launched Gatwick Express, the world's first non-stop airport to city centre rail service, between the airport and London Victoria station.

The Gatwick Express service commenced in May 1984 with air-conditioned InterCity stock.

In June 2008 Gatwick Express ceased to exist as a separate franchise, being merged into the Southern franchise, although continuing to maintain its own identity.

Some peak-hour Gatwick Express services now continue beyond Gatwick Airport to Brighton.

The origins of the Gatwick Express service come from the initial opening of Gatwick Airport railway station in June 1958.

Class 73 hauling Mark 2 stock on a Gatwick Express service through Clapham Junction

In May 1984 the non-stop Gatwick Express service commenced with Mark 2 stock.

Gatwick Express was the first portion of British Rail's InterCity sector to be converted into a separate train operating unit, ready for franchising as a private business with the assets transferred to Gatwick Express Limited ( legal name Gatwick Express Limited, company no 2912338 ) in March 1994.

The Gatwick Express franchise was awarded by the Director of Passenger Rail Franchising to National Express with the franchise commencing on 28 April 1996.

Heathrow is London's main airport, having replaced RAF Northolt, and together with Gatwick, Southend, Stansted, Luton and London City, London is the busiest city airport system in the world by passenger traffic ( with 133, 666, 888 passengers travelling through the six airports ); and second only to New York City in terms of traffic movements.

The chaos of the prelude to the attack, as city residents are forcibly evacuated to the country, leads to the story's centre in Rochester, which is struck by an off-target missile aimed at Gatwick Airport.

Thameslink is a 50-station main-line route in the British railway system running north to south through London from Bedford to Brighton, serving both London Gatwick Airport and London Luton Airport.

Its headquarters is in Crawley, West Sussex, England, near Gatwick Airport.

Virgin Atlantic's head office, known as The Office, is located in the Business Quarter of Crawley, West Sussex, England, near Gatwick Airport.

As a result it is now regarded as a fashionable and desirable place to live for the British middle classes and is within easy commuting distance of the City of London and West End and the main railway termini for transport to airports at Heathrow and Gatwick and the south of England.

Gatwick Airport is located north of the centre of Crawley, West Sussex, and south of Central London.

Also known as London Gatwick, it is London's second largest international airport and second busiest by total passenger traffic in the United Kingdom after Heathrow.

Furthermore, Gatwick is Europe's leading airport for point-to-point flights and has the world's busiest single-use runway averaging 52 aircraft movements per hour.

Gatwick is unique amongst London's airports in having a significant airline presence representing each of the three main airline business models: full service, low / no frills and charter.

* 1241: The name " Gatwick " is first recorded, as Gatwik, the name of a manor, on the site of today's airport ( under the northmost edge of North Terminal's aircraft taxiing area ).

( On the adjacent map, Gatwick Manor is at the northwest end of the racecourse ; its name is somewhat obscured by the map's paper being eroded over an old crease.

Comparing old and new maps seems to show that the modern Gatwick Manor hotel is not the old Gatwick Manor but a rename for another old building, near Lowfield Heath.

( The present Gatwick station is on the same site.

It is hoped that this will firmly establish Gatwick as the airport of choice for air travellers whose journey begins and / or ends in London and other parts of South East England.

It is expected that GIP will use its relationships to persuade new and existing airlines to consider launching additional routes from Gatwick, reinstating services suspended as a result of the global recession in the wake of the financial crisis that began in 2007 and Open Skies and / or expanding their existing flying programme from the airport in the near future.

Created by advertising agency Lewis Moberly, the new blue-and-white corporate identity is intended as a challenger brand to BAA and aims to differentiate Gatwick from rival Heathrow in support of majority owner GIP's corporate goal to establish Gatwick as London's airport of choice for passengers and airlines.

Crawley, a major settlement is 13 miles ( 21 km ) to the north, and Gatwick Airport is 16 miles ( 26 km ) in the same direction.

This is the case with Tokyo-Haneda ( HND ) and Tokyo-Narita ( NRT ); New York-JFK ( JFK ), New York-La Guardia ( LGA ); as well as London Heathrow ( LHR ) and London Gatwick ( LGW ).

In April 2007 the Department for Transport announced that the Gatwick Express franchise was to be incorporated into the South Central franchise with the services transferring to Southern ( legal name New Southern Railway Limited, company no 3010919 ) on 22 June 2008.

The new buildings opened on 27 May 1958 with a regular train service, and the station took over the name Gatwick Airport.

The North Downs Line is the name of the passenger train service connecting Reading, on the Great Western Main Line, to Gatwick Airport, on the Brighton Main Line.

In February 2011, the company's domain name was taken over by former Greek sister company Viking Hellas ( Flyviking. com Limited ), with flights between Gatwick, England and Greece, Turkey and Egypt using Airbus A320.

This included new car ferry services between Southampton ( Eastleigh ) and Cherbourg as well as between Southend ( Rochford ) and Ostend and a DC-3 passenger service linking Gatwick and Le Touquet.

In 1966, passenger numbers at Gatwick reached one million per annum for the first time.

In 1968, annual passenger numbers at Gatwick hit the two million mark for the first time.

By the end of the 1960s, annual passenger numbers at Gatwick had grown to three million, with British United Airways accounting for almost half of these.

For air travel, Medway residents must use Kent's main airports Kent International ( Manston ) or Lydd but these lack extensive passenger facilities or routes, thus the London airports are used the vast majority of the time ( mainly Gatwick, Heathrow, Luton and Stansted )

With over 73 million passenger entries and exits between April 2010 and March 2011, Victoria is the second busiest railway terminus in London ( and the UK ) after Waterloo, and includes an air terminal for passengers travelling by train to Gatwick Airport ; it is one of 18 stations managed by Network Rail.

On 12 October 2009, a Qatar Airways Airbus A340-600 conducted the world's first commercial passenger flight using a mixture of kerosene and synthetic Gas-to-Liquid ( GTL ) fuel, produced from natural gas, on its flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Doha.

This additional traffic required substantial improvements to the railway infrastructure, notably at Newhaven harbour, where electric lighting was installed, but also at Three Bridges, where a new freight marshalling yard was established, and at Gatwick and Haywards Heath, where passing sidings were constructed so that the frequent passenger trains would not be impeded by the slower-moving freight.

* June 17 – A passenger aboard CityFlyer Express Flight 8106 – a BAe 146 with 97 other people on board flying from Zürich Airport in Zürich, Switzerland, to London Gatwick Airport in England – grabs a flight attendant, holds scissors to her throat, and threatens to blow up the plane.

British European Airways ' Bristol Sycamore | Bristol 171 Mk 3A at London Gatwick on the scheduled passenger service from Birmingham in 1955

* Southern ( passenger rail operation ) and Gatwick Express

In terms of passenger entries and exits between April 2010 and March 2011, Gatwick Airport is the tenth-busiest station outside London.

First Great Western Link ran passenger services from along the Great Western Main Line from London Paddington to Greenford, Windsor & Eton Central, Marlow, Henley, Reading, Bedwyn, Oxford, Bicester Town, Worcester, Hereford and Stratford-upon-Avon and the Reading to Basingstoke and Gatwick Airport services.

* The fact that on identical routes with the same fare structure its costs at Gatwick are only marginally lower than at Heathrow, whereas load factors, revenues and yields — the profit per passenger — are significantly lower at Gatwick than at Heathrow.

* April 28-Further British train operating companies begin operation of their passenger service franchises as part of the privatisation of British Rail: Gatwick Express and Midland Mainline ( both National Express Group ) and Great North Eastern Railway ( Sea Containers Ltd ).

As of early 2012, the branding on the units has been modified to read simply ' Express ' rather than ' Gatwick Express ' to avoid passenger confusion when used on fast Brighton mainline services which do not call at Gatwick Airport.

Later the Zurich flights were suspended due to low passenger numbers and were replaced by daily flights to London / Gatwick, while there was a slight reduction in the Paris and Brussels frequencies to enable two weekly flights from Athens to Manchester to operate.

On 12 October 2009, a Qatar Airways Airbus A340-600 conducted a the world's first commercial passenger flight using a mixture of kerosene and synthetic Gas-to-Liquid fuel in its flight from London's Gatwick Airport to Doha.