London, UK

Thousands of passengers faced diversions, delays and even cancellations at Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom after a "short-notice staff absence" led to disruption on Thursday (September 14). 

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The shortage of air traffic controllers led to 22 cancellations as of 10:00pm (BST), Gatwick confirmed. According to the website FlightRadar24, hundreds of flights were delayed. The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) was sorry over its staffing shortages and Gatwick Airport said it expected a normal service on Friday. 

People were impacted due to the staff issue as some flights of the travellers were from far away places. As quoted by EURO News, one passenger said on social media platform X that they had "landed at Heathrow airport, supposed to go Gatwick" and were stuck on the runway for an hour after landing, without any information. 

Also read: European Union slaps TikTok with fine of $369mn over child data breaches 

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One passenger complained on X, formerly known as Twitter, that they had "landed at Heathrow airport, supposed to go Gatwick" and had been stuck on the runway for an hour after landing. 

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary asked the NATS boss to step down and the EasyJet was angry over the delays and cancellations. As quoted by UK media outlets, O'Leary said: "It is unacceptable that more flights and hundreds of passengers are suffering delays to/from Gatwick Airport due to Nats CEO, Martin Rolfe's blatant failure to adequately staff UK ATC."

"Airlines are paying millions of pounds to Nats each and every year and should not have to see their passengers suffer avoidable delays due to UK ATC staff shortages," O'Leary added. 

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Also read: UK PM Rishi Sunak vows action after man dies in dog attack, orders ban on American XL bully breed 

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Recent issue with UK airspace 

This comes just a few days after flights using UK airspace were delayed or cancelled for several hours towards the end of August 28 due to what Britain's NATS said was a technical issue that it had now identified and remedied. Around 2,000 flights are being cancelled across the UK. 

NATS had earlier had to restrict the flow of aircraft and manually input flight plans after the issue affected its system's ability to automatically process flight plans, with airlines and airports warning of delays and cancellations across Europe. 

During August's chaos, a spokesperson for London Heathrow said the airport was working with NATS and other airport partners to minimise the impact on passengers, while Gatwick, south of London, said it was seeing multiple delays and cancellations. 

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