As soon as an incident is declared at an airfield, Eurocontrol will issue a Zero-Rate slot application, basically meaning that any aircraft waiting to depart to, in this case Gatwick, will have their flightplan suspended until further notice, and therefore that are unable to depart for LGW. You would have two options here, first would be to cancel and refile to a differant destination. This often happens with BRT flights into MAN when a restricition is put into place due fog, so only operators whose aircraft can land in 200m for example are allowed to depart. If LBA is clear they can flightplan to go here. This makes sure that each airport has the capacity to accept any inbound flights that are re-routed, as say for example LGW was closed, and everyone was intending to divert to BOH it wouldn’t be able to cope. With a re-routing you would also have to change alternates and therefore have sufficient fuel to divert away from a potential problem. (eg if it was snowing in the North of the UK you may have to change your alternate from Manchester as a worse case scenario to Gatwick or Prestwick -this would be based on their forecast’s being workable). The second option is to sit an wait it out – it’s unlikely to be known straight away how long the airfield will be closed for.
Most operators will have commercial preferances as to alternates which usually means they hay have another representation there – either logistically, engineering or even a base. On a small scale Manx2 would usually divert to Blackpool from Leeds, even if closer alternates of MAN, DSA or HUY were available, whilst Atlas Air’s primary divert from PIK may be MAN rather than GLA or EDI.
In terms of aircraft that are already airborne they would obviously have to divert. LHR would be a virtually no go area, due it’s heavy traffic flows, and parking problems once you get down. For larger operators it would be unlikely that would get there aircraft all in the same place, so Easy may share between BOH, BRS and LTN for example, BA the same perhaps also utilising STN. Charter operators and Long-haul operators are more likely to head towards BHX and MAN. Those coming from Transatlantic flights would be flying past these airfields and may simply be able to land, refuel, and await an improvement (and as mentioned above most would have a representation here). Some operators (as mentioned above by RDC1000) may even make the choice to divert back to origin (such as BA’s Shuttle flights or Other regional operators) to protect the onward flying programme, and the pax could then be re-accomodated later, or coached to the destination.
Also – best remember that if it was LGW, BOH would be closed overnight (it opens for short periods for the mail operations which are worked around controller rest), as could MSE. If it was LBA you’d presently loose the options of MME, DSA, BLK, and LPL simultainiously at certain times of night!
There are so many differant scenarios and complications in any given circumstance that it is hard to predict how any given day will fall!
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