A two-runway Gatwick. Credit: Gatwick Airport Limited.

Digital screens that display flight information for passengers have shut down at the UK’s Gatwick Airport due to a damaged Vodafone fibre-optic cable.

A technical issue caused in the cable forced Gatwick’s newly introduced Cloud-based flight information displays to cease operations.

As a result, the UK’s second largest airport, which welcomes 45 million passengers, used whiteboards to display flight departure times and gate numbers.

ispreview.co.uk reported a Gatwick Airport spokesperson tweeting as: “Due to damage to a Vodafone fibre-optic cable, we are continuing to display our flight info manually.

“Contingencies are working – we have whiteboards and friendly staff on hand to help, and tens of thousands of passengers have departed on time. Apologies for any inconvenience.”

“Due to damage to a Vodafone fibre-optic cable, we are continuing to display our flight info manually.”

A Vodafone Spokesperson said that the damaged cable used by Gatwick Airport has been identified and the company’s engineers are working to fix it quickly.

The airport said some passengers had missed their flights due to the problems.

In February, Gatwick became the first major airport in the world to introduce the VisionAir Cloud-based flight information display system (FIDS).

Compared to Legacy FID systems, which needs software loaded on a separate PC behind the screen to run them, Gatwick’s latest 1,200 FIDS connect through a web browser from any operating system.

Running independently, the new screens take just 3Mbps of bandwidth making it fast and responsive to updates.