A British man “brazenly tailgated” passengers at London’s second busiest airport to board an international flight without a ticket or a passport — in the second such incident in less than two months.
The man, whose identity has not been released, apparently avoided check-in at Gatwick Airport at around noon on Feb. 5 and headed straight to the security area and boarding gates, according to The Sun.
He then allegedly “tailgated” through security checkpoints and managed to get onto the Norwegian Air Shuttle plane headed for Copenhagen, Denmark without showing anybody at the gate his boarding pass or passport.
“The man had no passport or flight ticket, but brazenly tailgated other passengers unnoticed through security checkpoints and somehow managed to board the flight at the gate,” an unidentified source told The Sun.
“It’s the second time this has happened recently,” the source said. “There needs to be an immediate review of security.”
Fortunately, the source said, suspicious Norwegian Air crew members noticed the man before takeoff and he was escorted off the plane by police, who described the security breach as a “medical incident.”
“Officers supported the airport’s security team and provided assistance to a man following concerns for his welfare,” Sussex Police told The Post.
He was not a threat to security, officials at Gatwick Airport stressed.
“The individual had been security screened and therefore posed no immediate security risk,” airport officials said in a statement to The Post, noting that he was “removed from the airport.”
As police responded to the incident, passengers onboard the Norwegian Air flight were temporarily taken off the plane, which was searched before it was cleared for departure.
The Boeing 737 eventually left London an hour and a half after the police were called to the scene, and landed in Copenhagen two hours behind schedule, according to FlightRadar24, a flight tracking website.
The Post has reached out to Norwegian Air for comment.
The incident marked the second time in less than two months that a British man was able to board an international flight from London without proper documentation.
On Dec. 26, Craig Sturt, 46, allegedly also tailgated behind a passenger through the automatic gates at London’s Heathrow Airport, without raising alarms to any of the law enforcement officers working, to board a flight to New York.
He was eventually caught when he failed to show proper identification at a US customs checkpoint, and was arrested in the Big Apple before being sent back to the UK.
UK police charged Sturt with Obtaining Services by Deception; Being Unlawfully Airside; Boarding an Aircraft without permission, and was remanded to appear in court, according to the Sun.
A probe was also launched into the security procedures at Heathrow in the aftermath, the Sun reports.
Meanwhile, in November, a Russian man had snuck onto a US-bound flight in a similar manner Sturt took, tailgating different passengers through an airport and boarding an international flight.
Sergey Vladimirovich Ochigava, 46, was found guilty after sneaking onboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Copenhagen to Los Angeles International Airport on Nov. 4, 2023.
It is understood, however, that the unidentified man involved in the breach at Gatwick will not face criminal charges as it is a “medical incident.”