Tens of thousands of passengers will wake up on Saturday where they did not intend to be after a security scare forced the evacuation of a large part of London’s Gatwick airport.
At 8.20am on Friday, staff at the South Terminal discovered a “suspected prohibited item” in a passenger’s cabin baggage. By 10.55am, police had ordered a security cordon and the evacuation of the building and adjacent railway station.
At the world’s busiest single-runway airport, plans began to unravel immediately for many who were due to take off.
Those who had already checked in and passed through security were able to remain “airside”, and many flights departed with fewer passengers than planned.
But other passengers were ordered to leave the building. Some sought shelter from bitterly cold weather in car parks while others walked to the North Terminal – about 15 minutes away.
Check-in at the South Terminal was suspended for more than four hours.
North Terminal – the main base for easyJet, Emirates and Tui – continued to operate but many passengers faced severe problems reaching the airport. Gatwick has the UK’s busiest airport railway station, with more than 50,000 passengers using it on an average day; while trains continued to run through it, they could not stop during the security alert.
Thameslink trains added an extra stop at Horley, a small commuter station in Surrey, from which passengers could walk to North Terminal in 30 minutes – or pay a reported £30 for a two-mile journey.
Eve and Alessandro, a couple from south London, were booked on Ryanair’s lunchtime flight to Alicante. They arrived at another nearby station, Three Bridges, and took a taxi to the only part of the airport they could access, the North Terminal.
“We’ve been waiting here for hours and our flight just keeps being pushed back,” Eve told The Independent.
Their flight eventually left about three hours behind schedule.
Meanwhile, thousands of bewildered passengers were arriving by air at the North Terminal. Arriving planes could park at the South Terminal gates, but from there they needed to be bussed to the North Terminal for processing. Once through and in International Arrivals, they discovered there were very few onward travel options.
Bomb disposal officers “made the package safe” and “two people who were detained … have subsequently been allowed to continue their journeys”, Sussex Police said.
Finally, at 2.45pm, the South Terminal was cleared to be reopened. But before departing passengers could be allowed back in, security staff and UK Border Force needed to return to their positions.
The travelling public were allowed back in shortly after 3pm, at which point long queues built up at check-in and service desks – with large numbers of disconsolate travellers learning that theirs were among the 80-plus flights that had been cancelled – many on British Airways, but with Vueling, Wizz Air and Ryanair also grounding planes.
Nadira, a British Airways passenger to Malta, learnt at around 3pm that her flight was cancelled and she would be travelling on Saturday instead.
“Everything has been badly handled, with no idea what’s going on,” she said. “Terrible communication.”
Once again the lack of slack in the system in the UK’s aviation infrastructure has been exposed – while the airlines will pick up a bill for several million pounds in passenger care costs and lost revenue.