‘The coughing got worse, then we were told to run’
evacuated when everyone started coughing uncontrollably.”
David Morris, 28, was at the check-in desk at the airport waiting for his British Airways flight to Edinburgh when the alert began.
He said: “We were queueing up and we were just about to check our bags in, and I was talking and started to cough to the point I was not able to keep talking. It was getting quite bad and we saw other people starting to cough at the same time.
“The people behind the desk were coughing the most and quite aggressively. Within two minutes, they shouted for everyone to get out.”
Mr Morris said BA check-in staff jumped over the desk to escape. He said that whatever was causing people to cough did not smell or have any colour to it. “Everyone was shouting and rushing towards the door,” he added.
Another witness, Paul Webb, said: “Loads of people started violently coughing and wheezing. It caused a bit of a panic and people started scrambling for the exits. I was with my disabled friend so had to get him out. But people were blocking the way.”
Chris Daly, 35, had just arrived on a flight from Glasgow. He said: “When we got into the airport terminal we could hear the fire alarms going off, then the crew were directing us to evacuate the building.”
Kat Devine, 33, was in the airport car park. She said: “A lot of ambulances showed up to start with, I think there were four or five, and three fire engines.”
Firefighters and police officers wore chemical hazard clothing as they searched the terminal.
A spokesman for London Fire Brigade said: “Two complete sweeps of the airport building were carried out jointly by firefighters and police officers both wearing protective equipment. No elevated readings were found and the building was ventilated, searched and declared safe.”
The emergency was declared over just after 7pm.
A investigation into the cause of the incident was still going on last night.
The scare comes amid heightened fears of a terror attack in the UK.
Flights in and out of the airport were diverted and surrounding roads were closed off, causing travel chaos for thousands of passengers. London Southend Airport said it had taken six diverted flights due to the incident at London City, while London Stansted in Essex also took six.
City Airport was at the centre of an earlier security scare when protesters from Black Lives Matter took over the runway for several hours last month.
Thousands of passengers were left stranded after nine people from the group blocked flights. The demonstrators had managed to get air-side by sailing across the Thames to the Royal Docks site.