MCO Wasn’t The Only Airport That Had A Really Bad Day; Those Poor Passengers At Gatwick!

by SharonKurheg

As if Orlando International Airport’s very bad week wasn’t enough, passengers flying out of Gatwick Airport (LGW) had their own problems on Monday when a damaged cable caused every digital departure board in the north and south terminals to black out for a good part of the day.

Well, they may have expected to resolve the issue soon, but in reality it took over TEN HOURS until the problem was fixed.

Because of the outage, airport employees were forced to work with walkie talkies, megaphones and whiteboards to alert passengers of changes to flight information.  Passengers’ response to this, not surprisingly, varied.

Photo via performer Elizabeth Humphries

Photo via Robin Blandford, D4H

Unfortunately, passengers couldn’t check for departure information online either, as that was also affected by the outage.

Screen Shot 2018-08-21 at 1.06.27 PM

Photo via Twitter

A spokeswoman for the cable company told The Telegraph Monday morning: “Our engineers are working hard to fix the cable as quickly as possible. This is a top priority for us and we are very sorry for any problems caused by this issue. We are keeping Gatwick airport constantly informed of progress.”

To their credit, it sounds as if Gatwick employees did the best they could under the circumstances they were given, but not before several passengers missed their flights because they didn’t know gates had changed.

“My flight showed one gate, so I walked there where another flight was boarding.

“Walked back to the board…different gate. Flight not showing on my new gate. Very disconcerting!”

Susan Smith

The problem was fixed about 10 hours after it begun. In a statement at 5:00pm BST, a Gatwick spokesperson said the issue had been resolved and flight information was being displayed normally. He said that “tens of thousands” of people departed on time and no flights were cancelled. Apologizing to customers, he added that the airport’s “manual contingency plan,” which included having extra staff on hand to help direct passengers, had worked well.

Tell that to Susan Smith 😕

* Feature photo via Twitter
** Many thanks to David P. for the heads up about this topic!

Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love if you decided to hang around and clicked the button on the top (if you’re on your computer) or the bottom (if you’re on your phone/tablet) of this page to follow our blog and get emailed notifications of when we post (it’s usually just two or three times a day). Or maybe you’d like to join our Facebook group, where we talk and ask questions about travel (including Disney parks), creative ways to earn frequent flyer miles and hotel points, how to save money on or for your trips, get access to travel  articles you may not see otherwise, etc. Whether you’ve read our posts before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!

This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

 

 

 

Leave a Comment