http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/07/17 ... _23034023/
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flig ... 25#e1f948d
According to Flightdardar24, ROU1925 took off from LGW at 1207Z, climbed to a maximum altitude of 7000 feet, was radar vectored South of LGW for close to an hour, declared an emergency around 1300Z and landed back in LGW at 1320.
It was in the air 1 hour and 13 minutes.
Gatwicks single runway was closed a first time for inspection from 1216 to 1245 and then for a second time for a very long time after ROU1925 came back to land and stayed on the runway. This created major disruptions for other airlines.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... elled.html
All flights were still not back to normal this morning.....
Alpha taxiway, parallel to LGW's single 08/26 runway, can be used as backup runway, but I do do think this could be done as long as the Air Canada Rouge 767 was parked on the regular runway. So it was likely of little relief during the time the 767 was occupying the main runway and the airport was essentillay shut down during this time.
From Wikipedia:
Gatwick Airport (also known as London Gatwick (IATA: LGW, ICAO: EGKK) is a major international airport in south-east England, 29.5 miles (47.5 km) south of Central London and 2.7 nautical miles (5.0 km; 3.1 mi) north of Crawley. It is the second-busiest airport by total passenger traffic in the United Kingdom, after London Heathrow. Gatwick is the eighth-busiest airport in Europe. Until 2016, it was the busiest single-use runway airport in the world before being overtaken by Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.