Stansted Airport IT outage: Hockerill school trip, honeymoon, family holidays and birthday celebrations disrupted
Students and staff from Hockerill Anglo-European College were among thousands of passengers caught up in chaos at Stansted Airport as an IT issue disrupted operations.
A glitch believed to be related to internet connectivity brought the terminal to a standstill on Sunday morning (May 11), affecting check-in, baggage and security.
During the day, around 88,000 passengers were due to travel on nearly 600 flights.
They included 48 Year 9 and 10 students from Hockerill, the Dunmow Road secondary school heading to Du Coté de Lacoume in the French Pyrenees.
Their early-morning departure plans were wrecked by the technical issues, which meant only travellers with hand luggage could board the Ryanair flight.
Thanks to the “tenacity” of staff, the group was able to travel on Monday morning for what should have been a six-day language and culture trip.
Principal Alasdair Mackenzie said: “I’m delighted this trip was able to go ahead. I would like to thank our students for their patience, good humour and willingness to help.
“Also, our parents for supporting the programme with last-minute changes and multiple trips to the airport in the early hours.
“I am, however, mostly indebted to our trip staff, whose drive to ensure this fantastic learning opportunity went ahead resulted in the trip departing the next morning.”
Another party from Hockerill departed on a school trip at the weekend, but travelled by Eurostar without incident.
Former Bishop’s Stortford Town Council worker Sue Belo managed to board her Jet2 flight for a holiday on the Greek isle of Lesbos, but her luggage did not make the trip.
She said: “I arrived at Stansted around 3.25am for a 6am flight but was refused entry into the terminal, even though there were several people in there.
“Eventually, they allowed us in, but the whole of the departures section was jam-packed – you couldn’t move.
“People were very traumatised and it was appalling from a health and safety point of view – visions of Hillsborough...”
Sue described inching forward in a queue for an hour to drop off her baggage, only to be told the zone was full.
“I checked with the Jet2 lady in Zone G that my luggage was in the right place and she said it was,” she said.
“After another long queue through security, I arrived at the gate of the aircraft at 7am, an hour after my flight time and over three-and-a-half hours after arriving at Stansted.”
It was almost 10am before the aircraft was finally able to take off. Sue said: “We were only offered water on the flight, and because we had no time to buy food etc at Stansted, it was quite upsetting to discover the sandwiches and hot food had all run out.
“I finally arrived in Lesbos, only to discover I had no luggage and there are 67 other people in the same boat.”
Sue criticised the airport and the airline’s response to the system crash. “You get the feeling that neither Stansted nor Jet2 have had crisis management training,” she said.
Cate Wilson’s return from a holiday in Crete was delayed by three hours, while Sandie Sedwick missed her flight to Austria because of the queues.
She said: “Missed our flight at 7.10am, despite being there at 4.30am. Next flight to Salzburg is Thursday, which is when we should have been coming back!”
Susan Critchley made it onto her Jet2 flight but said: “We were stuck in this horrendous situation. We arrived at 3am. It took us over six hours to get on a plane.
“It was a complete disaster for many people. We had no water and were in a mass of people, some trying to get to Ryanair check-in, some trying to get through security and some trying to drop their bags off because the check-in staff couldn’t take them.
“It was a mass of people jammed into the airport with no guidance for the whole time. It was horrendous. Some airport staff were great, but the lack of information was shocking, especially in this day and age.”
Eileen Valder, who was heading home, was delayed at Palma in Majorca for five hours.
Renata Gratton was travelling to the Balearic island and shared: “We arrived at Stansted at 3.30am for a 5.55am flight with an 18-month-old.
“Total chaos, nobody knew what was going on, and after five hours stuck in a queue with no water, I had to change the baby’s nappy in her buggy in the middle of thousands of people!
“We caught our flight four hours late after being told by other passengers to dump our luggage in a zone with all Jet2 passenger luggage, arrived in Majorca and guess what… no cases! Horrendous start to our family holiday, cases arrived 24 hours later.”
Jet2 passenger Liz Reynolds arrived in the Canary Islands four hours late on Sunday without her luggage – which eventually arrived in Lanzarote on Monday afternoon.
Rona Mac switched to Gatwick to get to Portugal: “We were left outside in the cold for hours, then when we finally got in, the queue to check in was so long we missed our flight. We had to pay £100 and get to Gatwick just to get out to Portugal for my beautiful friend’s hen do. It was chaos.”
Denise Mackay-Downham also left Stansted: “After waiting around from 4am, five hours in total, our option was to fly [Monday] evening. We were only there for two nights, three days, so we got a flight from Luton to Bucharest at 10pm that evening.”
Other travellers were stranded on their honeymoon without luggage or missed the flight for their 21st birthday celebrations.
However, Simon Leach had an alternative view: “We were due to fly in last night at 9.30pm – flight delayed by six hours. Jet2 changed our flight free of charge so we got an extra day’s holiday.”
Stansted Airport issued an apology during the delays. On Monday, a spokesman said investigations into the cause of the IT issues were continuing.
He said the problem was fully resolved by mid-morning on Sunday and the airport was operating near normal by early afternoon, with the majority of departing flights leaving on time across the day and just some knock-on flight delays.
Arriving flights were largely unaffected and there were no cancelled flights, he said.
Passengers were held outside the terminal as a safety precaution to prevent overcrowding. Medical assistance was available, and staff handed out water to travellers waiting to clear security.
