Britain’s major airport crisis is in danger of becoming the norm

The frustration of British tourists is that air traffic control is just one of a series of dominoes propping up our airports. Move just one and the net falls. And these events seem to happen more now than ever.

Problems come in all shapes and sizes. In May, Gatwick suspended incoming flights for an hour after reports of a drone near the airfield. Problematic, though not as catastrophic as in 2018, when 1,000 flights were canceled or diverted over a three-day period due to a series of alleged drone sightings.

During the semester at the end of May,Border Force electronic gates failed at all UK airports, leading to queues and delays lasting several hours. The problem meant that all passports had to be manually checked, a process that British airports are no longer prepared for. One passenger wrote on Twitter: “The Europeans in the queue were laughing at us.”

The e-gate failure came around the same time that BA canceled more than 175 flights due to another computer glitch, this time affecting its billing systems. The flag carrier has been plagued by technological problems in recent years, which persisted even after Sean Doyleits president, wrote a letter to frequent flyers in 2022 promising “a better British Airways.”

When summer came the threat of strike was coming. July 14, Unite announced that 1,000 Gatwick workers would go on strike for eight days in July and August over a pay dispute. In the end, the strike was called off, but passengers still bore the brunt after easyJet preemptively canceled more than 1,700 flights.