As delays dragged on for hours at Gatwick, patience among stranded passengers wore thin and airline staff found themselves fielding a growing barrage of anxious questions.
Then, at a crucial moment, one traveller caught in the chaos stepped forward to help — turning himself into a human loudspeaker for overwhelmed easyJet employees.
Kurtis Toy, who had been removed from a flight to Aberdeen on Tuesday after spending more than four hours on board without food, volunteered to call out instructions to the crowd.
The 36-year-old cyber security consultant from Aberdeenshire had, by coincidence, been in London to deliver a talk on Britain’s resilience when technology breaks down.
Instead, he found himself among the 330,000 passengers hit on the first day of widespread cancellations triggered by major technical problems with air traffic control systems.
Mr Toy noticed two easyJet staff members struggling to deal with hundreds of frustrated travellers, made harder by the fact they did not yet have clear information about where passengers should go.
After offering to assist, he began projecting the latest updates across the terminal — drawing applause from fellow passengers and spurring him on to keep going.
In a TikTok video that has been viewed six million times, Mr Toy can be heard saying: “Everyone listen up for a second again please. So, if your flight currently says cancelled, and it’s not one of the ones I’ve read out, we don’t know which gate to go to for you to get your luggage back.”
‘The problem is obviously for security reasons, you need to be escorted out of the airport but they’re trying to organise it obviously for everyone who’s been cancelled, so there’s a list coming in very, very slowly of where to go for which cancellation.’
Kurtis Toy became one of the 330,000 passengers caught up in the first day of cancellations chaos caused by major technical issues with air traffic control systems
Mr Toy, who had been kicked off a flight to Aberdeen on Tuesday after more than four hours on board without food, stepped up and offered to shout out instructions
Mr Toy has since spoken to Metro, describing the workers as ‘clearly exasperated and frustrated’ and were ‘doing remarkably well but just weren’t very loud’.
He added: ‘I heard what one member of staff had said, but the other person on the other side did not. So I just shouted it out.
‘She tried to say thank you, and I said, “Look, I have a very loud voice, and I really don’t have a problem with shouting to people”.
‘She was reluctant, and I was like, “You guys can crack on with getting the info, and then I can just call it out for you – if that would help?”. I read out the first lot, I got a round of applause, and somebody shouted thank you, which was nice.
‘So I turned to the others and I just said to them quietly, “We’ve got this. Let’s do another one”.’
Mr Toy also told how one passenger, who assumed he worked for easyJet, got a bit ‘mouthy’, so he ‘made it clear to him that I’m under no obligation to stay calm, so change your tone or go away’.
He added: ‘I made it loudly clear that I won’t be taking c**p from anybody, I will pass on the information as we get it, but I can’t do any more than that and neither can they. And he did back down.’
As his voice became increasingly hoarse having gone without a proper meal for 12 hours, a woman gave Mr Toy a bottle of water and a KitKat – and he later got an Airbnb room in central London.
Asked whether he felt like a hero, Mr Toy said: ‘Not at all, it is daft to be called a hero for shouting orders at people, it was just loud customer service, nothing more than that.
Passengers queue for hours for a flight at the South Terminal of London Gatwick Airport yesterday
A passenger sleeps on the floor surrounded by luggage at Gatwick Airport yesterday
‘I will have “can you please go to Gate 559” going round my head for the rest of my life now.’
His actions were praised online, including by his husband Benjamin McToy, who said he was ‘very proud’ of Mr Toy who had been ‘genuinely just trying to help organise folk’.
Mr Toy’s sister Sharon Toy also wrote on TikTok that he is the founder and chief executive of his own company, Onca Technologies Ltd (Cyber Security), and the chief executive and co-founder for the Cyber Centre of Excellence.
She added: ‘He does give a lot of training and does tabletop exercises with boards and managers so he’s not afraid to speak up when he thinks it’s needed. He’s also the oldest of the five of us… think that’s where his teacher’s voice comes from.’
He was also dubbed the ‘hero of Gatwick’, while one commenter said: ‘As a project manager, I’d hire this guy today if I had a job available.’
It comes as dozens more flights in and out of Britain were cancelled today as chaos caused by major technical issues with air traffic control systems entered a third day.
A total of 51 services at UK airports have been axed today. London Heathrow was worst affected with 28 flights cancelled, including 21 arrivals and seven departures.
Some 11 further flights were cancelled at Gatwick and five at Glasgow along with a handful of other services across Aberdeen, London City, Luton and Manchester.
But the disruption that has caused chaos for 330,000 passengers since Tuesday did start to ease this morning, with schedules set to return to normal later today.
System issues have caused more than 2,100 flights to be cancelled so far and led to calls for National Air Traffic Services (NATS) chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
Our News Outlet has contacted easyJet for comment.
