Water outage disrupts toilets and restaurants at London Gatwick Airport

A power outage at a water treatment plant in southeast England cut water to London Gatwick Airport on July 26, leaving toilets out of order and forcing some restaurants and bars to close. The failure turned one of Britain’s busiest airports into a basic-services bottleneck, with passengers facing disruptions to hand-washing facilities, drinking fountains and food service as the airport worked to keep travelers moving.

Gatwick said it was providing bottled water while crews worked to restore normal supply. Coverage of the outage said the disruption affected both terminals, and passengers described confusion around unusable toilets and empty water points. Flights continued during the incident, even as the airport tried to manage the knock-on effects on passenger flow, cleaning, catering and turnaround routines.

BBC News identified SES Water as the supplier serving parts of Surrey, Kent and South London, and said Gatwick had been left without running water after the local area was hit by a supply outage. Reuters reported that the problem stemmed from a power outage at a water treatment plant in southeast England, linking a utility failure away from the terminal to the immediate breakdown of sanitation and restaurant service inside the airport. The airport’s response centered on bottled water and temporary workarounds, the kind of contingency measures that can limit but not erase disruption at a large transport hub.

Reuters-distributed summary said water supply remained affected into the evening because a leak repair was still ongoing, and that water was expected to be restored by mid-morning the next day. That timeline meant the airport spent much of the day operating with constrained facilities for holidaymakers, business travelers and connecting passengers passing through a major international gateway.

The incident fit a pattern Gatwick has faced before. Earlier reporting in 2022 and 2021 described water-related disruptions that limited access to toilets and, in one case, led to closures of some facilities after a burst pipe. The latest outage showed how quickly a single utility failure can ripple through an airport built on constant movement and dependable service.