Gatewick Airport runway found with a hole delays many flights

Gatwick Airport, one of the busiest airports in United Kingdom closed its main runway after discovering a hole on runway during inspections.

According to Mirror UK, The arriving flights to air space of the Gatwick airport were forced to circle the city at least for 10 minutes before the airport authorities made arrangements for an alternate runway at 7:40 am Sunday. Airport spokeswomen said that the closing of main runway was a precautionary measure to ensure the safety of the arriving flights and the passengers.

During an inspection of runway, a hole was found on the runway which forced the airport authorities to open an alternate runway which resulted in delay of many flights. As per the reports eight flights were diverted. Gatwick airport is reported to be a single runway airport and the other runway is used when the main runway is unavailable. Passenger arriving the Britain's second busiest airport were disappointed due to delay of flights in hours.

An airport spokeswoman said: "This evening at 19:40, Gatwick had to switch operations from its usual southern runway to its stand-in northern runway, as a precautionary measure, following findings during one of our regular maintenance checks.

"During this change over we had a period of approximately 10 minutes when the airport was unable to accept landing aircraft, resulting in approximately eight aircraft being diverted and delays to flights.

"We would like to apologize to any passengers impacted by this but the safety of our passengers is our number one priority. We are working hard to resume usual operations and get our passengers on their way."

A number of passengers hit up the internet by tweeting few of their confusions related to Gatwick runway problem

A passenger by name Isobel, said: "Major turbulence the whole plane journey home and then we're diverted to an airport miles away from Gatwick because the runways shut".

Marie Leonard tweeted: "What's happening @Gatwick-Airport tonight? Our flight has been diverted".

Passenger by name Charla wrote: "flight delayed then diverted to Southampton because all runways at Gatwick are closed... great"