Gatwick Airport put flight info on whiteboards after screens all broke

Staff
at Gatwick Airport had to write out flight departure information
on whiteboards after the screens stopped
working.
Edmund von der
Burg/Twitter

• All the screens at Gatwick Airport stopped working on
  Monday due to an IT failure.
• Airport staff had to write out flight information on
  whiteboards instead.
• Footage on social media showed staff writing out the
  flight status of each flight and rubbing them off as updates
  came in.
• A “handful” of people missed their flights, but tens of
  thousands of other people managed to catch their flights on
  time, the airport said.

The screens at the UK’s second-largest airport stopped working on
Monday, forcing staff to write out flight departure information
on a whiteboard.

Both the north and south terminals at Gatwick Airport, London,
were affected by an IT failure that led to its screens not
working, the airport tweeted
around 8:30 a.m. on Monday morning.

The problem was caused by an “ongoing issue” with the airport’s
IT provider, Vodafone, a spokesman for the airport told Business
Insider. As of 12:30 p.m., the issue had still not been resolved.

Photos and videos posted on social media showed airport staff
updating flight information by listing flight numbers,
destinations, status, and gate numbers in black, red and green
ink, and rubbing the writing out and updating with new
information as they came in.

Footage showed dozens of travellers surrounding two whiteboards
at the south terminal as staff answered calls and updated the
flight statuses.

Rob Fahey/Twitter

Rob Fahey, who was at the south terminal of the airport, tweeted:
“This tiny whiteboard is the only departures information in
Gatwick Airport right now; every screen is offline. Utter chaos.”

“A handful” of passengers missed their flights due to the screen
failure, a Gatwick Airport spokesman told Business Insider.
However, he added that “tens of thousands” of passengers managed
to catch their flights and depart on time.

Edmund von der Burg, a passenger from Stockholm who was at the
airport, tweeted
that the staff were “all very helpful and dealing with the info
screen fault well,” but suggested that they share the departure
information via Twitter.

Some 45.6 million passengers travelled through Gatwick Airport
last year, according to statistics
from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It is the
second-largest in the UK in terms of passenger use, the
UK Civil Aviation Authority reported, and 33rd-largest in the
world, according to the Port Authority.

A Gatwick Airport spokesman told Business Insider: “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 displayed manually
in the terminals.

“Gatwick would like to apologise to any passengers affected and
expects Vodafone to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”