Britain's second busiest airport descended into chaos on Monday as staff were forced to write flight times and gate numbers on whiteboards with marker pens after an IT failure.

Passengers at Gatwick had to rely on handwritten information for each departure as a damaged Vodafone fibre cable caused every digital departure board in the south and north terminal to black out.

Some tourists missed their flights due to the issue, which saw several airport workers gathered around a number of makeshift display boards trying to update the details.

Taking instructions through handheld radios, Gatwick announcers had to to use loud hailers to alert passengers of any changes.

The airport's website was also affected by the outage, which lasted almost eight hours.