London Gatwick Airport (LGW) has been left without any running water on a busy Sunday at the height of the summer holidays, leaving toilets backed up, restaurants shut, and airport staffers handing out bottles of water to travelers battling hot conditions in the South East of England.
At around 11 am on Sunday, a spokesperson for Gatwick, the second busiest airport in London and the second busiest single runway airport in the world, confirmed that a problem with the water supply had cut off water to both its North and South terminals.
The extent of the problems soon became apparent when passengers were unable to flush the toilets or wash their hands, while the numerous restaurants and cafe concessions throughout the airport had to pull down their shutters due to the lack of water.
The issue was traced to a much wider problem affecting the Horley area where Gatwick is located. The local water company, SES Water, said a power outage had initially shut down the Bough Beech Water Treatment Works, but when power was restored, “a number of complications” meant water still wasn’t flowing.
The problems were first reported at 6 am on July 26, and it took nearly eight hours before the water treatment plant was back up and running. Even then, however, SES Water said it could take some time before the normal water supply was fully restored.
In a statement, the water company said: “We would like to thank customers and our partners at Gatwick Airport for their continued patience, and we are sorry for the inconvenience this is causing.”
London Gatwick Airport served more than 42 million passengers last year, and is operating at near capacity. In the next few years, however, the airport has a plan to transform one of its taxiways into a fully functioning runway, which will dramatically increase the number of flights that can operate to and from Gatwick.
The airport was actually designed and built with two parallel runways: 8L and 26L, and 8R and 26R, but international design and safety standards mean that only one runway can be used at any one time. Gatwick normally uses the southern runway (8R and 26R) for all departures and arrivals, with the northern runway (8L and 26L) used as the airport’s main taxiway.
In order to comply with international safety standards, the center line of the Northern Runway will be moved 12 meters north to allow enough seperation with the Southern Runway.
Southern water along with the other British water companies are criminally incompetent