Gatwick airport heads have revealed plans to upgrade its snowplough fleet.

Stewart Wingate, chief executive of Britain’s second busiest air terminal, said to reporters that a new snow-removal kit would be included in part of £1 billion in upgrades to the airport.

Gatwick was closed for more than 48 hours last week amid intense ice and snowfall that blanketed runways and crippled transport systems surrounding the facility. The disruption affected the journeys of more than 120,000 passengers whilst 600 became stranded inside the airport facilities after icy roads and railways made ground transportation nearly impossible.

After similar weather-related disruptions last year, Mr Wingate said that he and Gatwick airport bosses had called the event unprecedented, saying it was an occurrence happening only once every 20 years. He added that now, only one year later, they’ve once again experienced so-called unprecedented weather. He said to those in attendance that if they were in his shoes, he was sure they’d likely soon be submitting orders for additional snow-removal equipment.

Wingate said that £600,000 in new snowploughs would come as part of £1 billion in updates from Global Infrastructure Partners, the airport’s new owner. The news comes after the American consortium had purchased Gatwick from BAA in 2009. BAA, the owner of Heathrow and other airports in the UK, had sold Gatwick to GIS just before Competition Commission investigation results had surfaced.