Gatwick Airport CHAOS: Bank Holiday horror continues to hit Southern rail
FURIOUS passengers have faced bank holiday weekend train chaos at Gatwick Airport after rail replacement services were already too packed.
Passengers face Bank holiday CHAOS at Gatwick Airport
After Sunday's chaos a futher 30 buses were brought in addition to the 60 already planned.
A spokesperson for GTR, which operates the Southern franchise, said: “We anticipated that the service would be busy today and given the engineering works and need for rail replacement bus services from Gatwick Airport to Three Bridges we put a queuing system in place at the station.
“At around 11.30am–12.30pm, the number of passengers at the station reached a peak of between 1,500-2,000, the equivalent of two or three trains, with queuing times up to one hour.”
The spokesperson said: “We are very sorry that passengers travelling to the south coast had to queue for longer than normal for rail replacement buses.
There are huge queues at Gatwick Airport
“Our passenger information team helped to manage this by referring to longer queuing times and asking passengers to consider not travelling via Gatwick Airport over that time.”
The Gatwick Express is still running its service every half hour between London Victor and Gatwick Airport as there are no direct services on Southern Rail.
Yesterday holidaymakers were told not to travel as National Rail said people were queueing for up to two hours at the airport during one of the hottest days of the year.
Images published on social media showed hordes of people in lines, waiting to leave the airport in the sweltering heat.
Southern advised people not to travel to the coast as there are no direct trains from London due to engineering work.
Absolutely shocking scenes at Gatwick airport... only 2 train platforms operational. Then a rail replacement bus south to Three Bridges and this is the queue on 3 levels of concourse for the bus! On one of the hottest days. @SouthernRailUK this is disgraceful! pic.twitter.com/n47TF46TMG
— Rhi (@rhiam88) May 6, 2018
The train company said: "There are currently large queues for the replacement bus services at Gatwick Airport and overcrowding at the station.
"As a result, customers should anticipate extended journey times and cancellations between London Victoria and Gatwick Airport to prevent further overcrowding.
"Services from Brighton towards London Victoria after 17:00 are expected to be extremely busy and journey times to be extended as a result."
It later said queues had begun to clear by around 3.15pm and apologised for the chaos.
@SouthernRailUK it’s an absolute shambles @Gatwick_Airport. There are small children in the crowd & people with limited mobility but there’s no visible support or queuing system. Its chaotic & dangerous, why wasn’t the rail replacement service better planned? pic.twitter.com/UOrgbvASQm
— Samantha Evans (@samanthacevans) May 6, 2018
One angry passenger tweeted: “Absolutely shocking scenes at Gatwick airport... only 2 train platforms operational.
“Then a rail replacement bus south to Three Bridges and this is the queue on 3 levels of concourse for the bus!
“On one of the hottest days. Southern Rail this is disgraceful!”
Southern blamed the chaos on engineering work between the airport and Three Bridges, meaning buses had to be used instead.
The firm said: "Demand has been incredibly high and we have been getting as many buses as possible through to reduce queues."
Nation Rail tweeted: “The queue time at Gatwick Airport to board a bus is currently 2 hours and it is strongly advised to not travel towards Brighton today."