Gatwick Airport hit by major IT outage

(Image credit: Pixabay)

A major IT failure at Gatwick Airport is causing misery for thousands of holidaymakers.

The fault, which is affecting the digital screens at the airport's departure lounge, has left staff resorting to manually writing out flight information such as departure gates on whiteboards.

A spokesperson for the airport told the BBC that the screens, which show departure information for flights leaving Gatwick, had stopped working earlier this morning.

"Due to an ongoing issue with Vodafone – a provider of IT services for Gatwick – flight information is not being displayed correctly on the airport's digital screens and is currently being displayed manually in the terminals," they added.

"Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers affected and expects Vodafone to resolve the issue as soon as possible."

Gatwick IT problems

The airport said that although thousands of travelers have been affected by the outage, no flights have been directly delayed, and only "a handful of people" had missed flights.

The outage stems from a fault with the screens, which are provided and operated by Vodafone. It said that a damaged fibre cable was to blame, and that the incident was "a top priority".

This comes just over a year after a major computer outage caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled at both Heathrow and Gatwick.

Mike Moore
Deputy Editor, TechRadar Pro

Mike Moore is Deputy Editor at TechRadar Pro. He has worked as a B2B and B2C tech journalist for nearly a decade, including at one of the UK's leading national newspapers and fellow Future title ITProPortal, and when he's not keeping track of all the latest enterprise and workplace trends, can most likely be found watching, following or taking part in some kind of sport.