Gatwick Airport (), also known as London Gatwick (IATA: LGW, ICAO: EGKK), is a major international airport near Crawley in West Sussex, southeast England, 29.5 miles (47.5 km) south of Central London. It is the second-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the United Kingdom, after Heathrow Airport. Gatwick is the eighth-busiest airport in Europe. Until 2017, it was the busiest single-use runway airport in the world, covering a total area of 674 hectares (1,670 acres).Gatwick opened as an aerodrome in the late 1920s; it has been in use for commercial flights since 1933. The airport has two terminals, the North Terminal and the South Terminal, which cover areas of 98,000 m2 (117,000 sq yd) and 160,000 m2 (190,000 sq yd) respectively. It operates as a single-runway airport, using a main runway with a length of 3,316 m (10,879 ft). A secondary runway is available but, due to its proximity to the main runway, can only be used if that is out of use. In 2018, 46.1 million passengers passed through the airport, a 1.1% increase compared with 2017. As of 2019, Gatwick is the second busiest airport in the world to only operate one runway (after Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport) with a passenger use of 46 million in 2018.