Water services were disrupted at Gatwick Airport (Image: Getty)
People heading abroad on their summer holidays have been reminded of their consumer rights after a major water outage hit Gatwick Airport. Passengers faced huge inconvenience after mains water stopped for much of the airport on Sunday, July 26, with toilets and restaurants forced to close.
The problem was caused by a power outage at Bough Beech Water Treatment Works, which has now been fixed, causing water outages in other regions near the airport. All services are back up and running as normal at Gatwick.
Given this frustrating experience for customers, travellers may wonder if they can get compensation or any refunds if they are affected by issues such as this.
Keep your receipts
Vix Leyton, consumer expert at thinkmoney, encouraged people who were impacted should keep their receipts. She said: “Anyone affected should keep receipts for reasonable extra costs, take screenshots or photographs of the disruption and complain directly to the airport.
“There is no guarantee those costs will be refunded, but it is much harder for a business to dismiss a complaint when the passenger can show exactly what happened and what it cost them.”
If you paid for a service and the company did not deliver, Ms Leyton said the first step is simply to ask for a refund. She said: “That could include a prepaid meal, lounge booking, shower, treatment or any other service which could not operate because of the outage.
“The business should not be able to keep the full payment for something it simply did not provide, and this should be one of the most straightforward costs to get back.” If the provider refuses to pay you back, there are other options.
£100 rule
Ms Leyton said: “If the company refuses, card users can ask their bank about chargeback. Section 75 may help with some credit-card purchases over £100, although many airport bookings will be below that threshold.”
Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act 1974 provides that when you buy an item with a credit card, even if only part of it was purchased through credit, the credit card provider and the vendor are jointly liable. Unfortunately, this only applies for purchases of more than £100 and up to £30,000.
However, if you are hoping for some recompense for the general inconvenience of the outage, this could be more difficult. Ms Leyton said: “That is different from receiving compensation for the wider inconvenience. A refund for a missed restaurant booking is realistic, whereas a large payout because your airport experience was miserable is much less likely.”
Compensation for missed flights
Another question is if you missed your flight because of the water outage. Ms Leyton said: “If the plane left on time but you did not get to the gate, the normal flight compensation rules are unlikely to help. Those rules are mainly there for flights the airline cancels, delays or overbooks, and do not generally cover every disaster that happens elsewhere in the airport, even when the passenger has done nothing wrong.”
You may also want to check over the terms of your travel insurance. But the expert said to check over the fine print before you get too hopeful. She warned: “Passengers should not assume the words ‘missed departure’ cover every possible reason for missing a flight.
“Policies often list very specific events, and an airport water outage may or may not be included. A passenger could try to recover a clear financial loss from the airport or another responsible organisation, but that would not be an automatic compensation claim.
“They would need to show who was at fault, that the loss was a foreseeable result and that they had taken reasonable steps to reach the flight.” However, your may have much more extensive rights should your flight be cancelled or seriously delayed because of an outage such as this.
A sign at Gatwick Airport (Image: Getty)
Fixed cash compensation
Ms Leyton said: “Passengers may then have rights to food, accommodation, rerouting or a refund. Fixed cash compensation would still depend on whether the disruption was considered within the airline’s control.”
Given these ambiguities in the rules, the expert urged people to keep records to evidence how they were affected. She said: “The frustrating reality is that you can be caught in a major airport failure, miss your flight and still find that every company involved points at somebody else.
“That is why passengers should create a paper trail immediately: speak to staff, get names or reference numbers, keep receipts and document the disruption while it is happening.”
Gatwick Airport said water supply fully returned on Monday morning.
“All toilet facilities are open, as well as food and beverage outlets and the airport is operating as normal,” it said.
SES Water, which supplies the airport, said: “We know this incident has caused disruption for customers and our partners and we are sorry.
“We thank everyone for their patience while our teams worked to restore supplies as quickly and safely as possible.”