A major water supply failure left thousands of passengers at UK Gatwick Airport without running water on Sunday, causing toilets to stop functioning, forcing restaurants and bars to close, and leaving travellers unable to buy hot drinks.
The disruption affected both the North and South terminals after a fault at SES Water’s Bough Beech Water Treatment Works interrupted water supplies across parts of southeast England. Despite the widespread inconvenience, airport officials confirmed that flights continued to operate as scheduled.
In a statement, Gatwick Airport said the water issue in the Horley area had disrupted supplies across both terminals and was being investigated.
The airport said bottled water was being distributed to passengers and staff while contingency measures were put in place to protect the welfare of travellers.
Airport officials also apologised for the disruption and said further updates would be provided as engineers worked to resolve the problem.
Passengers described long queues, unusable toilets and closed food outlets as businesses struggled to operate without running water. Many restaurants, cafés and bars suspended service because staff could not maintain basic hygiene requirements, while tea and coffee could not be prepared.
Roger Wood, who arrived at Gatwick’s South Terminal at around 11am before a flight to New York, said there was little communication about the incident.
He said he and his friends went to a bar but were told they could not be served because staff were unable to wash their hands. He added that he had never seen the airport’s Wetherspoons so empty and that toilets had no water available for passengers to wash their hands.
The disruption was traced to a problem at SES Water’s Bough Beech Water Treatment Works, which supplies customers across Surrey, West Sussex, Kent and parts of south London. The utility company said customers in the TN8, TN11 and parts of the RH1 postcode areas experienced either low water pressure or a complete loss of supply.
SES Water said engineers were working to restore normal service as quickly as possible and that bottled water was being delivered to vulnerable customers affected by the outage.
Although flights were not delayed by the incident, the disruption added to a series of infrastructure related problems that have affected UK airports in recent months. Earlier this year, several airports experienced operational disruption linked to technical failures, while previous water supply issues at major transport hubs have highlighted the importance of resilient utility services for airport operations.
Passengers travelling through Gatwick have been advised to check for updates from the airport and their airlines, although airport authorities said flight schedules remained unaffected while efforts continued to restore the water supply.
