Travel journalist Simon Calder told the BBC that London Gatwick is “the UK’s second busiest airport and today there would be around 100,000 passengers flying in and out”.

About half of those passengers would use the south terminal, he says.

“This morning someone going through security had an item that raised very serious security concerns,” he continues.

As a result, the entire “land side” of the South Terminal – the area of ​​the airport before security screening – was closed, including the train station that is being built in the South Terminal.

Airlines using the South Terminal include British Airways, Spain’s Veuling Airlines, Hungarian airline WizzAir, Air Malta and RyanAir and many more. Easyjest has a small presence there, he says, but mainly uses the North Terminal.

Calder continues: “Flights are still landing. But if they land in the South Terminal, people go to the gate as usual, but then they don’t go out on the air bridge and go out in international arrivals, they are put. on buses to the North Terminal to be processed there.”

“That will mean a lot of congestion,” he says, “and I can’t leave the North Terminal to go to the station.

“So you have this very, very difficult situation of thousands of people waiting outside the South Terminal waiting for flights and thousands of people leaving the North Terminal not really knowing how they’re going to go forward.”