Britain’s not working – that’s what we keep being told, anyway. After a day spent at Gatwick yesterday, I can’t help but agree. I was travelling on my own with a seven-month-old baby, so perhaps I started off on the wrong foot in the first place. But in actual fact, the baby was the least troubling part of my airport adventures.
We had to walk the many miles from Gatwick arrivals gates to passport control. ‘Where have you been?’, the official asked us. ‘Gatwick’. ‘Oh’, he responded sheepishly
The first I knew about the travel disruptions was once everyone was through the gate, ready – or so we thought – to board a Norwegian Air flight to Oslo. But the scheduled departure time came and went, with no messaging from staff. Eventually, a tannoy went out apologising for the ‘slight’ (ha!) delay due to what they termed as a fault of ‘airport services’, but stating that we’d be boarding in half an hour.
We all thought this might be a jet bridge or bus problem, until we looked at our phones and saw the news that flights were grounded due to air traffic control issues. The Telegraph were reporting that all flights into both Heathrow and Gatwick were halted, but neither the airport nor the airline did. In fact, no one ever mentioned the actual problem to us passengers, merely blaming the vague ‘airport services’.
