Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Friday the 15th of September and once again, thousands of airline passengers flying to or from Gatwick Airport south of London are waking up where they didn't intend to be.

And this is after the latest disruption involving air traffic control.

The third episode to hitch passengers at Gatwick in 18 days.

Just a reminder, Bank Holiday Monday, the 28th of August,

we saw a nationwide failure of the NATS Air Traffic Control Service

system. That caused mayhem. More than 2,000 flights cancelled as a result, 300,000 people

out of position. Then we saw just nine days ago staff shortage at the control tower at Gatwick Airport.

That resulted in thousands of people not getting where they needed to be. And we've got a

copy of that involving a controller, one of three in the tower at Gatwick Airport who unfortunately

went sick on Thursday afternoon. That caused an immediate reduction in the arrival's rate of

aircraft. Now, at many airports that wouldn't matter too much, but Gatwick is special.

Gatwick is the busiest single runway airport in the world. The air traffic controllers work

minor miracles every day to get hundreds of planes in and out. And if they are reduced in staffing from three down to two,

then the number they can handle is reduced.

And immediately the diversions begin.

We saw planes ending up in Brussels and Cardiff as a result of that.

A number went to Bournemouth, to Luton, to Stansted,

extremely disruptive for an awful lot of people. And of course, everybody is wondering, well,

first of all, how do I get where I need to be? And that's going to require the airlines who are ultimately

responsible every time a flight gets cancelled to get people where they need to be. And secondly,

when is this going to happen again? And gosh, well, it seems almost incredible to a lot of people that we can have so much disruption as a result of one person, unfortunately, going sick.

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