Gatwick ran out of water on Sunday morning and stayed dry for most of the day.
If you flew from the North or South Terminal on 26 July, you queued for a toilet that could not be flushed and found the coffee shops shuttered.
Every flight still departed on time. That gap, between a terminal that stopped working and an operation that did not, decides exactly what you can claim.
The Key Facts
- Around 06:00 Sunday supply failed after a power cut at Bough Beech Water Treatment Works.
- Both terminals dry toilets closed, taps unusable, bars and restaurants shut.
- Back Sunday evening Gatwick reported water restored to the vast majority of the campus.
- No flights affected the airport confirmed every departure ran as scheduled.
- Up to 100 per cent refundable on any paid service you could not use.
What Actually Happened
SES Water traced the failure to a power outage at its Bough Beech Water Treatment Works in Kent.
The power came back. The restart did not go smoothly.
The supplier said a number of complications following the outage left customers with low pressure or a temporary loss of supply altogether.
Gatwick was one of those customers. So was the whole Horley area around it.
Both terminals lost running water from early on Sunday morning, at the height of the summer holiday season.
Toilets could not be flushed. Sinks did not work. Bars and restaurants pulled their shutters down because they could not operate without water.
Staff handed out bottled water across both terminals and the airport said contingency measures were in place to protect passenger welfare.
Engineers worked through the day. Supply came back to most of the airport on Sunday evening.
Water had “returned to the vast majority of the London Gatwick campus”, with most toilets reopened and the rest expected back for Monday’s first flights.
Following an issue at the Bough Beech Water Treatment Works, water supply has now returned to the vast majority of the London Gatwick campus. Most toilet facilities are now open.
— London Gatwick LGW (@Gatwick_Airport) July 26, 2026
What Passengers Were Saying
The airport made no general announcement for most of the morning, so the first warning most people got came from other passengers.
There were “no coffees, no water fountains, no flushing toilets and no hand washing”, she wrote, and no public announcement from the airport telling passengers so.
If you are on your way to Gatwick, there is no running water across the entire airport. No coffees, no water fountains, no flushing toilets and no hand washing.
— Julia Hartley-Brewer (@JuliaHB1) July 26, 2026
“No water. No restaurants or bars able to be open.”
Gatwick Airport. No water. No restaurants or bars able to be open. 1st world problems
— Roger of RTW (@JlpRoger) July 26, 2026
“The headline doesn’t really cover it. It’s the entire area, not just the airport.”
Comment from r/aviation
by u/PeacefulIntentions in r/aviation
Sky News spoke to passengers still waiting to fly out that morning.
One, bound for Palma, described a long queue at the toilets and a smell of sewage building as the hours went on.
A member of staff had been posted at the door to stop anyone going in. Children in the queue were getting restless.
“I had to beg to be able to go to the loo. They weren’t letting anybody in.”
Nick Hollings, a passenger flying to Florida, speaking to Sky News, 26 Jul 2026
What You Can Actually Do
If Sunday cost you money rather than just comfort, there is a route to getting it back. It is narrower than most people expect, and it runs on a deadline.
- Work out what you actually paid for and did not receive. A lounge pass, a Premium Security booking, a pre-paid meal or a drinks package all count.
- Gather the evidence now. Booking confirmations, card statements, and any photograph you took of a closed shutter or a taped-off toilet.
- Claim from the business you paid, not from your airline. If you bought lounge access, the lounge operator is the trader who owes you.
- Complain to the airport within 30 days of your date of travel. That deadline is set out on Gatwick’s own complaints page and it is firm.
- Put it in writing and use the words price reduction and Consumer Rights Act 2015. A vague complaint gets a vague reply.
What You Are Owed
Start with the rule everyone reaches for first, because it is the one that will not help you here.
UK261 pays out for cancellations, long delays and denied boarding, and only where the airline is at fault. The Civil Aviation Authority is explicit that you need both.
Every Gatwick flight departed as scheduled on Sunday. Nothing triggers. The CAA sets out the test here.
Gatwick itself has no equivalent scheme. There is no airport version of UK261. What it has is a complaints process.
Complaints must be made no later than 30 days after your date of travel. The airport acknowledges within 48 hours, and an investigation can take up to 28 working days.
If you are unhappy with the answer, stage two reviews how your complaint was handled rather than looking at the substance afresh. The full procedure is published here.
Your Consumer Rights Act Claim
If you paid for a service at Gatwick and could not use it on Sunday, that is a contract the trader did not perform.
Section 56 allows a price reduction of up to the full amount you paid.
This is the route almost nobody mentions, and it is the one with actual money attached.
The Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires a service to be carried out with reasonable care and skill. A lounge with no working toilets and no hot drinks does not clear that bar.
Normally the trader gets to put it right by doing the job again. A lounge on the day you flew cannot be repeated, so repeat performance is impossible.
When that happens, you can require a price reduction instead. Section 56 says that reduction may be the full amount of the price.
Once the trader agrees you are entitled to a refund, it is due within 14 days, paid by your original payment method, with no fee deducted. Section 56 is short and worth reading.
- Lounge access booked and paid for, then unusable or closed.
- Premium Security or any fast-track product you bought in advance.
- Pre-paid dining and drinks packages at outlets that shut.
- Paid seating areas and similar extras you could not use.
Travel insurance is almost certainly not the answer, and it is worth understanding why before you waste a week on it.
The Financial Ombudsman Service notes that most policies only let you abandon a trip after a delay of a set length on the outward journey, usually 24 hours.
Nobody was delayed. The flights left on time, which is precisely the problem for an insurance claim.
Policies also carve out the causes. In ombudsman decision DRN-4582036, an Admiral policy specifically excluded travel delay claims caused by operational and IT issues, and the ombudsman found it fair to rely on that.
Insurers generally expect you to approach the airline or the provider first where a loss is recoverable elsewhere. Discomfort, on its own, is not an insured event.
None of this is legal advice. It is a map of which door to knock on.
Why This Keeps Happening
This is not new ground for Gatwick.
In July 2022, during a heatwave, a burst main at Shipley Bridge near Horley cut supplies to homes in the area and to the airport.
Toilets closed. Bottled water was handed out. Water tankers were brought on site. The BBC reported it at the time.
Same airport, same supplier, same script, four years apart.
The uncomfortable truth is that a terminal handling tens of thousands of people a day sits at the end of a local water network it does not own or control.
Which raises the question every passenger asked on Sunday. If there was no water, how did the flights keep going?
Major airports typically hold “a non-potable redundant water supply for firefighting”, he wrote, to protect against the loss of mains water.
bilby_qld — PPRuNe — Rumours & News, 26 Jul 2026
The principle holds either way. A runway needs fire cover, fuel and air traffic control. None of those depend on the drinking water main.
The terminals are the opposite. Nearly everything a passenger actually touches, from the taps to the toilets to the coffee machine, runs on potable supply.
So the operation carried on and the building around it stopped working. On paper Sunday was a clean day at Gatwick. On the ground it was anything but.
If you paid for something on Sunday that you never got to use, the claim is real and the clock is 30 days.
If you simply had a miserable morning, the honest answer is that no scheme in UK law puts a price on that.
