Gatwick Cancels Flights Due to Sickness and Covid

Gatwick will cancel around 82 departures over the coming week because of short-term sickness and COVID-19 in the air traffic control tower.

Airport boss Stewart Wingate said he was “very frustrated” by a series of problems at Gatwick’s air traffic control.

Mr Wingate revealed that around 30% of air traffic control staff are not available,.

The largest number of cancellations will be on Friday 29 September, with 33 departures affected.

No cancellations are expected for Tuesday or Saturday.

The cancellations amount to around 3% of planned departures at Gatwick over the period.

The staff work for Nats, formerly known as the National Air Traffic Service.

Discussions will begin tomorrow on which flights to cancel, with airlines affected in proportion to their use of the airport.

Gatwick had a number of cancellations on Friday and the weekend, caused by staff shortages in air traffic control.

October is a less busy month for air traffic, and Mr Wingate said he expected there would be enough air traffic control staff to handle the reduced number of flights, and further cancellations would not be necessary.

This comes just weeks after a data glitch at NATS triggered widespread disruption to airlines grounding flights and leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

Britain’s aviation regulator is preparing to launch a probe looking into why the country’s air traffic control system collapsed during the summer holiday break.