Cometh the hour, cometh the man.

Amid the hordes booted off their flights yesterday, surrounding easyJet staff to demand food vouchers and the whereabouts of their luggage – one cool-headed passenger with a booming voice rose up.

Kurtis Toy, 36, seeing the two ‘overwhelmed’ easyJet staff left to deal with the Nats fallout at Gatwick, thought that he could help bark out the latest travel information and get the hundreds of irritable passengers moving.

The cybersecurity expert, who was down in London giving a speech on the UK’s resilience when technology fails, was ironically caught up in the Nats meltdown which wreaked havoc across the nation’s airports.

Booted off his flight from Gatwick to Aberdeen after more than 4 hours on board without food, he approached the easyJet desk where everyone was shouting over each other.

He told : ‘There were people who were hard of hearing and there was no megaphone. Everyone was shouting questions at them “Where do we go? How long do we have to wait?” and the boards aren’t updating.

‘The workers were clearly exasperated and frustrated because they didn’t have any information either. They had to phone to get the list of definitely cancelled flights.

‘They were doing remarkably well but just weren’t very loud. I heard what one member of staff had said, but the other person on the other side did not.

‘So I just shouted it out. She tried to say thank you, and I said, “Look, I have a very loud voice, and I really don’t have a problem with shouting to people”.

‘She was reluctant, and I was like, “You guys can crack on with getting the info, and then I can just call it out for you – if that would help”.’

The staff member looked away, so Kurtis took this as permission to hop over the desk and begin bellowing out the latest updates.

He said: ‘I read out the first lot, I got a round of applause, and somebody shouted thank you, which was nice. So I turned to the others and I just said to them quietly, “We’ve got this. Let’s do another one”.

When one passenger assuming he worked for easyJet got a bit ‘mouthy’, Kurtis said: ‘I made it clear to him that I’m under no obligation to stay calm, so change your tone or go away.

‘I made it loudly clear that I won’t be taking crap from anybody, I will pass on the information as we get it, but I can’t do any more than that and neither can they. And he did back down.’

His throat was becoming hoarse – but he was saved by a kind woman who grabbed him a bottle of water and a Kit-Kat.

Exhausted and without a proper meal for 12 hours, the crowd finally began to dissipate – his job was done.

‘They each gave me a hug before I left, and I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t help anymore”. And they were like, “No, thank you for what you’ve done”.

‘They were very sweet, and I did feel bad for them because they obviously weren’t prepared for the situation. Because why would they be?’

One problem was that he was giving out so much information that by the time he had finished – there were no hotels left to book nearby for himself.

But after finding an Airbnb in central, he was back in the airport, unbeknownst to him, a viral star after a video of his performance garnered more than 3million views overnight.

He said: ‘It was a friend who messaged me this morning with it, and then my husband just told me it’s now had 3 million views, which is just crazy.

‘I could see people filming, but I couldn’t tell them to stop. I had a job to do.’

Asked if he feels like a hero, Kurtis says: ‘Not at all, it is daft to be called a hero for shouting orders at people, it was just loud customer service, nothing more than that.

‘I will have can you please go to Gate 559 going round my head for the rest of my life now.’

Nats, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, said in a statement: ‘Our operations are stable and we continue to work closely with airlines and airports to support their recovery from the ongoing disruption to their operations.

‘We would also like to reiterate our apology to all those affected – passengers, airlines and airports – by our system issue yesterday.

‘While our immediate focus is on safely managing today’s flights, a full investigation will be conducted to establish what happened and identify any further action needed.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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