Gatwick security: the rules, the queues and how to be ready

Both terminals screen hand luggage with CT scanners, the upgrade that ended the 100ml era at Gatwick in March 2026. Liquids in containers up to 2 litres now travel inside your bag, no plastic pouch, and laptops and tablets stay packed. Coats, jackets and belts still come off, your boarding pass gets you through the entry gates, and the queue itself runs under five minutes more than 95% of the time by the airport's regulated measure. Pre-booked Fast Track starts at £6 if you want the dedicated lane anyway.

The two things that still catch people out are timing and habits. The 05:00 to 08:00 short-haul bank is the crunch, especially in school holidays, and travellers who still decant everything into 100ml bottles or dig their laptop out at the tray are preparing for rules that no longer apply here, while the airport you fly home from may still enforce them. The sections below sort out both.

Security sits just past check-in in both buildings. At the North Terminal the entrance is on Level 20, the same floor as the check-in zones; at the South Terminal it is on Level 30, one escalator up from check-in and the station walkway. Automatic gates scan your boarding pass on entry, paper or phone, and no passport is needed at this stage. Then it is trays and the roller bed: bag flat, coat and belt in the tray, pockets emptied of keys, coins and phone.

Passengers go through a millimetre-wave body scanner, the kind that resolves objects without storing images. You can decline it, but the alternative is a private hand search that takes significantly longer, so almost nobody does. If the X-ray flags your bag, it diverts to a search desk where staff open it with you; a tidy bag with cables and chargers gathered in one place gets through that conversation much faster than a stuffed one. From tray to repacking, a clean run takes a few minutes on top of whatever the queue was, and the departures board airside shows your gate as soon as it is allocated.

Gatwick airport security rules changed with the scanners, and the new baseline is simple. Staying in the bag: liquids, creams, gels, pastes and aerosols in containers up to 2 litres each, as long as the container is not metal or double-walled (those still need to be emptied), plus laptops, tablets, e-readers and every other large electrical. The full allowance, the exceptions and the return-leg catch are on the Gatwick liquid rules page. Coming off or out: coats, jackets and belts every time, shoes when staff ask, and anything in your pockets.

Two packing choices speed up the X-ray. The airport recommends putting food and powders in hold luggage where you can, because both blur the scanner image and trigger bag searches. And the size frame still applies before any of this: the airport works to a hand-luggage maximum of 56cm x 45cm x 25cm, but your airline's own limit is usually smaller and is the one enforced at the gate; the baggage allowance guide has the airline-by-airline numbers. The list of outright banned items (blades, tools, weapons and the rest) is unchanged and lives on gov.uk's hand luggage restrictions.

Gatwick's security queues are measured under a CAA-endorsed standard, clocked from joining the queue to reaching the roller bed, and the airport publishes the results monthly. The target is a queue of 5 min or less for 95% of core hours (02:30 to 22:30) and 15 minutes or less for 98%. Over the year to August 2025 both terminals met it: queues were five minutes or shorter 96.77% of the time at North and 95.84% at South, and 15 minutes or shorter more than 99.7% of the time at both. In August 2025 itself, the busiest month of the year, no single queue reached 30 minutes.

Read those numbers with two caveats. They measure the queue, not the whole checkpoint, so add the trays, the scanner and repacking to your mental budget. And the averages smooth over the one window when Gatwick genuinely heaves: the 05:00 to 08:00 short-haul departure bank, worst on school-holiday mornings, when arriving as your airline's check-in window opens is the reliable defence. For the live wait on the day, the screens above the security entrance at each terminal show the current queue time, so you read the real number the moment you arrive rather than the long-run average. Overnight the lanes close once the last departures clear, from roughly 01:00, reopening for the first wave at around 04:00 at South and 04:30 at North.

Fast Track security costs from £6 pre-booked online and runs at both terminals. It buys a dedicated, usually shorter lane up to the scanners; the screening itself is identical. Against measured five-minute queues it is rarely essential, but at the dawn peak, with a tight connection, or bundled into a lounge booking (Clubrooms includes it at both terminals) it earns its keep. The Fast Track guide covers booking and whether the timings justify it for your flight.

Families get their own lane at each terminal, with wider gates that take pushchairs and staff used to small travellers. Children have to be lifted out while the pushchair goes through the X-ray, so give the lane a few unhurried minutes; everything else about flying with young children, pushchairs at the gate included, is in the travelling with children guide. Beside the Assisted Travel welcome desk in each check-in area there is also a dedicated assistance lane with wider gates for wheelchairs, staff trained for hidden disabilities, and hidden-disability lanyards available from the desk itself. You can use that lane without having booked assistance, though booking through your airline at least 48 hours ahead gets the full service; the special assistance guide explains how.

• Pack like it is 2026, not 2016. Leave the liquids and the laptop in the bag, keep big bottles out of metal flasks, and put food and powders in the hold bag if you have one. The people unpacking at the tray are the queue now.
• Dress for the tray. Belt, coat and jacket come off every time, so wear them loose and pocket your keys, coins and phone into your bag before you reach the front rather than at it.
• Aim off for the dawn bank. Between 05:00 and 08:00 the short-haul wave stacks every lane, and school holidays double it. Be at the front of your airline's check-in window, or book Fast Track for £6 and stop thinking about it.
• Pack for the stricter airport. Gatwick takes 2-litre containers; the airport you fly home from may still hold the 100ml line, and a bottle that sailed out gets binned coming back. Check the return airport's rules before you rely on the new allowance.
• Going through with wheels? The family and assistance lanes exist to be used: pushchairs, wheelchairs and anyone who needs a slower pace get wider gates and patient staff, and no booking is needed for the lane itself. The rest of Gatwick's help, from the services index, starts landside.