Nine flights squawked the 7700 emergency code simultaneously in the early hours of this morning over London Gatwick, sending a wave of panic through air traffic control and forcing hundreds of passengers into unscheduled landings at airports across southern England.
The unprecedented cluster of distress signals came after the runway at the UK’s second busiest airport was closed when a British Airways flight suffered a technical issue at around 12.50am. Flight BA2673 from Palma Mallorca was surrounded by fire engines and blocked the runway for nearly an hour, according to Flightradar24 data.
“Nine flights declared emergency over Gatwick after a technical issue closed the runway, diverting 14 flights.”
As aircraft stacked in holding patterns, fuel ran low. Nine planes declared an emergency — the standard 7700 squawk — likely because they were short on fuel. Gatwick Airport confirmed the closure was caused by a technical issue with an aircraft.
In total, 14 flights were diverted before the runway reopened at about 1.30am. Hundreds of passengers on British Airways, TUI, easyJet and Jet2 were forced to land at Heathrow, Stansted, Luton and Birmingham.
Passenger Ravinder Singh was travelling from Tenerife to Gatwick but ended up in Stansted. “Still on the plane to see what’s happening next!!” he wrote on X at 1.11am. “Hoping we can be flown back to Gatwick soon! It’s been much longer flight from Tenerife than usual.”
Ciara, another traveller, posted: “Never seen anything like this before. My phone blew up with 7700 notifications, I thought the world was ending lol.”
A Gatwick spokesperson said: “As a result, a small number of flights were diverted, with the majority later returning to London Gatwick. As always, safety and security is our number one priority.”
The incident laid bare the fragility of Gatwick’s single-runway operation, where a single mechanical failure on the tarmac can ripple into a night of chaos in the skies above.