AIRLINE passengers embarking on an overseas bank holiday getaway were forced to travel without their luggage due to a baggage system problem at Gatwick Airport.

Travellers faced long queues at check-in desks as they arrived at the West Sussex airport on Friday morning ahead of the long weekend.

Passengers described chaotic scenes and criticised a lack of information about what they should do with their bags.

Mark Ralphs, 42, of Brighton, arrived in Bologna, Italy, on an easyJet flight with his wife and their two toddlers, but were missing their child car seats.

He told the Press Association: "It's impossible for us to go any further without car seats.

"We're currently in the lost and found queue surrounded by a lot of other annoyed travellers.

"The people in front of us have lost all their clothes and they're due to go to a wedding tomorrow.

"It's a nightmare scenario. You're away for a long weekend or a holiday and the start becomes ridiculously stressful because a system went down."

Mr Ralphs, who works for a digital marketing agency, said he has "never seen anything like it" at Gatwick.

"There were a lot of worried people, worried they were going to lose their flight," he said. "A lot of unhappy children.

"In 90 minutes to two hours of waiting we had one tannoy message saying 'we're sorry'. That's a pretty poor show.

"There's got to be a better and more efficient plan than just hurrying you through and saying 'dump your bags here'."

Another passenger, Andy O'Brien, wrote on Twitter: "I'm in Malaga. My cases however are at LGW. I knew when I handed them to the porter that I may not see them again!"

IT consultant Simon Armiger, 43, said: "Looks like the automated bag handling is down and staff are trying to do a separate set of tags by hand. But it's been chaos.

"Spent first 40 minutes being passed from one easyJet staff member to another with no-one knowing who had the tags for our flight.

"They're finally getting organised after 45 minutes of chaos. They've got tables out with the tags for each destination laid out."

Airport officials first posted a message on Twitter shortly after 5.30am to alert customers to the issue. It reported at 10.15am that the fault was rectified.

A Gatwick statement read: "A problem with the baggage system that occurred at Gatwick has been rectified and the airport is recovering from this morning's disruption.

"Gatwick would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused to passengers whose aircraft departed without their bag.

"The airport is working closely with our airlines to forward all bags to passengers at the earliest opportunity."

An easyJet spokeswoman apologised for the inconvenience and said the airline appreciated "how difficult it is for passengers to be without their bags".

She went on: "EasyJet takes the well-being of our passengers very seriously and we are working very closely with the airport team to return luggage to our passengers as soon as possible.

"Although the baggage belt issue has now been resolved we would ask customers arriving at London Gatwick to bear with us as the airport recovers from this morning's disruption."

Passengers travelling on flights on Friday were asked to carry any essential items in their hand luggage.

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