Passengers face hours of delays after Gatwick Airport system outage

A Gatwick Airport spokesperson said one flight was cancelled and two were diverted from Gatwick
PA Archive
Aisling Grace9 December 2023

Travellers faced hours of delays at Gatwick Airport on Saturday after a system outage grounded flights.

Passengers flying to and from the West Sussex airport reported planes being stuck on the tarmac after the problems hit at around 8am.

The airport said the air traffic control outage had since been fixed, but apologised for ongoing delays.

Dozens of departures and arrivals appeared to be affected, with football fans travelling to Premier League matches among those experiencing issues.

Danny Bellringer, 45, was travelling from Dublin with fellow Brighton fans for the game against Burnley when the group was told their Aer Lingus flight would be delayed by at least two hours.

The oil rig worker said: “There’s not a huge amount we can do – we’re kind of used to it when travelling over from Ireland to the UK for games, (it) very rarely goes completely smoothly.”

Padraic Mac Aonghusa, 24, said fellow passengers on his Ryanair flight from Dublin were “angry” when the pilot announced there would be a delay due to the issues at Gatwick.

Mr Mac Aonghusa, who works in finance in Ireland, was travelling for the game between Crystal Palace and Liverpool and was delayed for an hour and 15 minutes.

A London Gatwick spokesperson said: “There was an outage to a local Nats system earlier this morning which has now been rectified.

“Some passengers may experience delays. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

The spokesperson added that one flight was cancelled and two were diverted from Gatwick.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in