Gatwick airport chaos as flights diverted due to ‘IT issues’ cause delays
Simon Calder says he’s ‘holding off’ booking a holiday
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The major airport blamed “IT issues” with Air Traffic Control for the problems. Landings appeared to be suspended early this morning.
The issues meant that three flights had to be diverted from Gatwick Airport including easyJet and British Airways planes.
FlightRadar and RadarBox showed several flights circling the airport around eight this morning.
Two long-haul British Airways flights were diverted to Heathrow. One was arriving from Tampa in Florida while another landed from Antigua.
The planes are expected to refuel at Heathrow and fly back to Gatwick at some point today.
An easyJet plane arriving from Belfast was also diverted to Luton airport due to Gatwick’s issues.
Gatwick Airport tweeted: “We have been experiencing IT issues in the Air Traffic Control tower this morning, resulting in three diverted flights.
“We continue to experience delays with both arrivals and departures, and are working to resolve this as soon as possible.”
In a later tweet it said: “Earlier IT issues in the Air Traffic Control tower this morning have been resolved and flights are arriving and departing the airport as normal.
“Some flights may still experience delays and we advise you to check the status of your flight with your airline.”
Paul Hancock tweeted: “Any idea when air traffic computer issue will be fixed? Planes still at gates.”
Lottie Wood tweeted a picture of the airport tarmac from onboard their flight at Heathrow.
They said: “My view from our section on tarmac at Heathrow, funny how I saw the plane being refuelled before you told us we would have to fly back to Gatwick.
“That was nearly an hour ago!”
Last week, passengers landing at Heathrow Airport faced delays due to an unexpected issue.
Several planes were forced to circle above the airport after a fox was spotted wandering on the runway.
Bird strike is a fairly common event at airports and occurs when birds hit a flying aircraft.
It is almost always fatal for the bird and can also cause damage to a plane’s engines which could be very dangerous.
Tourists flying to the Spanish hotspot of Malaga have also faced delays of up to two hours this week.
Extreme fog around the airport prevented planes from taking off in the morning which resulted in delays.
Some passengers reported that the fog was so bad they couldn’t see the signs when they were driving to the airport.
Any passenger flying from Gatwick Airport today is advised to check the status of their flight with their airline.
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