Gatwick Airport station was evacuated on September 29 due to severe overcrowding as rail chaos spread across the Thameslink network following two separate incidents where individuals were struck by trains. The station was completely cleared with no passengers permitted to enter until further notice, creating significant disruption for travelers attempting to access one of Britain's busiest airports.

The disruption began when emergency services were first called at 9:13 am to a person hit by a train between Luton and St Albans City, blocking all lines between these stations. Just over an hour later, a second incident occurred at 10:55 am when another person was struck between Haywards Heath and Gatwick Airport. Both incidents occurred outside London but created widespread travel chaos affecting routes in and out of the capital.

Thameslink issued a stark warning to passengers, stating 'Due to multiple incidents across the network, Thameslink services will be cancelled until further notice and we recommend not to travel.' The rail operator advised passengers on stationary trains to remain onboard unless directed by staff, assuring them that 'We know where you are and we are working to get you on the move again shortly.'

The disruption extended beyond Thameslink services, affecting multiple rail operators across southern England. Southern services between Brighton, Gatwick Airport, East Croydon and London were expected to be cancelled or severely delayed, while Gatwick Express services were suspended entirely. East Midlands Railway trains were also affected, with services unable to run between Luton and London St Pancras International, and Connect route services between Corby and London St Pancras International were similarly disrupted.

A major outage at Amazon Web Services has disrupted operations for numerous popular applications and platforms globally, affecting millions of users. The cloud computing infrastructure failure began early Monday morning, with users reporting widespread issues accessing services including Snapchat, Duolingo, Zoom, and various gaming platforms. Amazon confirmed it was investigating increased error rates and latency across multiple AWS services, though the company has not yet identified the root cause of the system failure.

The disruption appears to have originated with servers hosted in the US-EAST-1 region, according to initial reports. This triggered a cascade effect that impacted AWS infrastructure supporting millions of websites and applications worldwide. Downdetector, a platform that monitors service outages, reported receiving over four million problem reports in a single morning—more than double the typical weekly volume—indicating the scale of the disruption across affected services.

Among the services experiencing significant operational problems are communication platforms like Zoom, Signal, and Slack; gaming services including Roblox, Fortnite, and PlayStation Network; social media applications such as Snapchat; and financial services from banks including Lloyds and Bank of Scotland. Streaming platforms Prime Video and Crunchyroll, along with educational tool Duolingo and design platform Canva, have also been affected by the cloud service failure.

The outage has manifested differently across regions, with Amazon's own websites remaining operational in Europe while still experiencing service-specific errors. AWS engineers are actively working to mitigate the issues and restore normal operations. The company has committed to providing regular updates as they work to resolve the widespread service disruption that has highlighted the internet's heavy reliance on cloud infrastructure providers.