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.
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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.”
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.
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By GlobalDataThe 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.
