Chaos at Gatwick as Thomas Cook customers suffer massive check-in queues

Hundreds of Thomas Cook customers have been caught up in huge delays at Gatwick Airport because there are not enough workers manning check-in gates, social media users have complained.

Photographs posted to Twitter appear to show hundreds of people waiting to check in at the West Sussex airport. 

Dozens of people have gone online to criticise Thomas Cook, with one calling their experience ‘dreadful’.

Mitchell Goldie, a Conservative councillor in Waltham Forest, tweeted early this morning that there were just ‘three people checking in a whole flight’. 

Another user, Barnyardos, posted a picture showing a crowd at the airport and added: ‘Got to be 500 people waiting [at] Gatwick South [terminal]. You’ve got three check in desks open out of 20.’ 

Sara Northey, meanwhile, wrote at 4am that ‘Thomas Cook can’t locate the crew for our flight so there will be a delay… amazing. Worst start to a holiday I have ever experienced.’ 

She earlier wrote of ‘unbelievably bad service’ and ‘no staff, hours of queuing’, adding: ‘Dreadful, will travel with someone else next time.’        

At Antalya airport in Turkey, meanwhile, one user wrote that they had experienced a three-and-a-half-hour delay for a flight to Gatwick. 

Lara Jade added: ‘Arrived at check in and our plane hadn’t even left the UK! Families and young children forced to sleep in the check in lane with no blankets of pillows.

‘Shocking.’ 

MailOnline has contacted Thomas Cook for comment.