Gatwick airport is not in terminal decline. In spite of British Airways announcing more than 2,500 job cuts and the transfer of some routes to Heathrow.

The airline is still the largest operator at the Sussex airport.

Airport managing director Roger Cato said Gatwick could do more to sell itself but some of the landing slots vacated by British Airways had already been taken by EasyJet and newly-established airline Astraeus had chosen Gatwick as its base.

He said: "BA will still have a significant presence here. It is our biggest customer with more than 40 aircraft based here.

"People have taken to the no-frills airlines but there will always be a place for the full-service operators, especially across the Atlantic."

EasyJet had started five new services this year from Gatwick to add to the three it operated before and the airline indicated it intended to do more.

Mr Cato said Gatwick's take-off and landing slots were fully allocated at peak times and many of the routes terminated after September 11 were being reinstated.

Continental Airlines had added a third daily flight to Houston, American Airlines had introduced a second service to Dallas and Emirates had increased the frequency of flights to Dubai.

Mr Cato said: "At Gatwick we are not very good at articulating the offer. Everyone knows that from Heathrow you can fly to almost anywhere in the world at almost any time with almost any flag-carrier.

"Unfortunately, it's not well known that from Gatwick there are more destinations served in the US, Canada and the Carribean than from Heathrow.

"Even with BA down-sizing, there are 40 destinations in North America and 142 worldwide that are served by charter operators. That's an incredible range but we do need to promote ourselves better."

He said Gatwick would do well to follow the example set by Virgin's Richard Branson and EasyJet's Stelios Haji-Ioannou.

He said: "They get an enormous amount of positive publicity, completely out of proportion to the size of their airlines."

Estimates for the number of passengers passing through Gatwick were recently revised down from 33 million to 29 million but Mr Cato, who formerly ran Heathrow for British Airports Authority (BAA), said he expected to see growth in passenger numbers in the next 18 months.