Gatwick Airport (IATA: LGW, ICAO: EGKK) is located 3.1 mi (5.0 km) north of the centre of Crawley,West Sussex, and 29.5 mi (47.5 km) 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 an hour. Its two terminals – North and South – cover an area of 810,000 sq ft (75,000 m²) and 1,300,000 sq ft (120,000 m²) respectively.

In 2011, over 33.6 million passengers passed through Gatwick.

Charter airlines generally prefer Gatwick over Heathrow as a base for London and the South East of England. From 1978 to 2008, many flights to and from the United States used Gatwick because of restrictions on the use of Heathrow implemented in the Bermuda II agreement between the UK and the US.. Under the agreement Heathrow allowed the right for only two US carrier and two UK carrier to serve flights to the United States. Currently, US Airways is the only US carrier that still serves Gatwick from the US. The airport is a base for scheduled operators Aer Lingus, British Airways (BA), EasyJet, Flybe, Monarch Airlines and Virgin Atlantic, as well as charter airlines including Thomas Cook Airlines and Thomson Airways. 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. As of January 2011, these respectively accounted for 37, 51 and 12% of total passenger traffic.

Thomas Cook (22 November 1808 – 18 July 1892) of Melbourne, Derbyshire, England founded the travel agency that in 2007 became Thomas Cook Group.

Thomas Cook was born to John and Elizabeth Cook, who lived at 9 Quick Close in the village of Melbourne, Derbyshire. The couple's first child, he was named after Elizabeth's father, Thomas Perkins. John Cook died when Thomas was three years old, and his mother remarried later that same year.

At the age of 10, Cook started working as an assistant to a local market gardener for a wage of six pence a week. At the age of 14, he secured an apprenticeship with John Pegg, and spent five years as a cabinet maker.

He was brought up as a strict Baptist, and joined his local Temperance Society. In February 1826, Cook became a preacher, and toured the region as a village evangelist, distributing pamphlets, and occasionally working as a cabinet maker to earn money. After working as a part-time publisher of Baptist and Temperance pamphlets, he became a Baptist minister in 1828.