{"id":767146,"date":"2026-09-11T10:22:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:22:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/767146\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T10:22:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T10:22:14","slug":"gatwick-airport-passenger-hailed-hero-after-helping-easyjet-staff-deal-with-travel-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/767146\/","title":{"rendered":"Gatwick Airport passenger hailed \u2018hero\u2019 after helping easyJet staff deal with travel chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n

Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n

As chaos<\/a> engulfed airports across the UK<\/a> this week, one \u201chero\u201d passenger stepped in to help dozens of customers at Gatwick<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Kurtis Toy, 36, had seen \u201coverwhelmed\u201d easyJet<\/a> customer service staff left to deal with the fallout of a technical glitch<\/a> that caused mass cancellations<\/a> and delays on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

The cyber security expert offered to step in and become a \u201chuman megaphone\u201d to help workers struggling to relay information to the large crowd of passengers. <\/p>\n

He could not take his flight from Gatwick to Aberdeen<\/a> and was one of at least 300,000 people impacted after National Air Traffic Services<\/a> (Nats) issued an alert over a \u201ctechnical issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

Footage shared on TikTok shows Mr Toy bellowing out updates to the crowd. He said: \u201cEveryone listen up for a second please. 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is obviously for security reasons, you need to be escorted out of the airport but they’re trying to organise it for everyone who’s been cancelled or not, so there’s a list coming in very, very slowly of where to go for which cancellation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ThousandsThousands of passengers waited for flights and connections at Gatwick Airport on Tuesday (Getty)<\/p>\n

Joy Matashi, who shared the clip, wrote: \u201cShoutout to this hero passenger who volunteered to help the understaffed easyJet team at Gatwick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 2,163 flights were affected by the glitch in the third major incident caused by a Nats system failure in the last three years.<\/p>\n

Its chief executive has been asked to provide a report after being summoned to see transport secretary Heidi Alexander on Wednesday to account for the disruption.<\/p>\n

Mr Toy told Metro<\/a>: \u201cThere were people who were hard of hearing and there was no megaphone. Everyone was shouting questions at them \u2018Where do we go? How long do we have to wait?\u2019 and the boards aren\u2019t updating.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe workers were clearly exasperated and frustrated because they didn\u2019t have any information either. They had to phone to get the list of definitely cancelled flights.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were doing remarkably well but just weren\u2019t very loud. 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, \u2018Look, I have a very loud voice, and I really don\u2019t have a problem with shouting to people\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"KurtisKurtis Toy was labelled a \u2018hero\u2019 after stepping in to help passengers and staff (Joy Matashi)<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was reluctant, and I was like, \u2018You guys can crack on with getting the info, and then I can just call it out for you \u2013 if that would help\u2019.<\/p>\n

He told the newspaper that after reading out the first lot of updates, he got a round of applause from the crowd, and decided to continue. <\/p>\n

Mr Toy said one passenger fetched him a bottle of water and a KitKat after his throat started becoming hoarse. <\/p>\n

He said the staff hugged him before he left and thanked him for his help. <\/p>\n

Asked if he felt like a hero, he said: \u201cNot 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will have \u2018can you please go to Gate 559\u2019 going round my head for the rest of my life now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}