London Gatwick, previously one of Britain’s worst airports for accessibility, is now ranked among the best in the UK and the best in London.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has published its 2025 rankings for special assistance services offered by UK airports to passengers with disabilities or reduced mobility.
In 2024, 5.5 million passengers requested assistance at UK airports, approximately 1.9% of total passengers. None of the airports who were in the “needs improvement” category from last year remain in this category with all of them having made significant efforts to improve.
London Gatwick has managed to rectify its previous ongoing issue of services and assistive equipment not being provided to arriving passengers within a suitable timeframe.
While this was originally promised to have been rectified in 2023 and had remained an issue throughout 2024, as of 2025 it has managed to meet the requirements “for at least 98% of arriving pre-notified disabled passengers and those with reduced mobility, assistance is available for each passenger within 20 minutes from on chocks”.
Bristol also moved up into the “good” category after significantly improving upon its waiting times and finally achieving its targets that it set for itself in March 2024 when it switched its assistance service provider to ABM and organised the additional staff and equipment that it procured as a result following its initial difficulties in handling the change.
Despite achieving a “good” rating last year, primarily due to other terminals exceeding “very good” requirements and offsetting Terminal 3’s shortcomings, London Heathrow Airport has once again seen its assistance service ratings decline. After a brief period of improvement in 2024, Heathrow is again reported as needing improvement, highlighting its ongoing struggle to provide consistently reliable assistance.
Terminal 3, in particular, continues to be a weak point due to its infrastructure challenges and multi-level design. While investments have been made in new lifts within the arrivals corridors of Terminal 3, these improvements have not been sufficient to prevent the airport’s overall drop in ratings.
Photo: Rob Munro
London Gatwick, previously one of Britain’s worst airports for accessibility, is now ranked among the best in the UK.
