HUNDREDS of pushchairs at Gatwick Airport have been stolen after families showed their gratitude for the free baby buggies by strolling off with them.
At the start of last year the airport launched a scheme at arrivals to offer families the free use of a pushchair on the walk from planes to the baggage halls.
The idea was to help passengers with young children by giving tired little legs a rest and to save parents from having to carry their infants immediately after a long flight.
Once they get to baggage reclaim, the parents are meant to leave behind the airport's buggies as they will be picking up their own.
However, the idea has backfired because more than 200, out of 260 ordered, have been stolen in the past six months.
Neil Martin, a father who landed at the airport with his three-month-old baby with no complimentary pushchair in sight, said: "I arrived back at Gatwick on December 23 with my partner and baby boy after a long weekend in Ireland.
"It was our first trip as parents, so we were new to how it works at airports, and when we had landed in Dublin our own pushchair was waiting for us at the end of the ramp getting off the plane.
"I thought it would be the same on our return to Gatwick.
"As we got off the plane and walked through arrivals we saw four large signs stating pushchairs were provided for families in our position but we never saw a single one.
"We had our hand luggage, which included all our baby stuff and, being just before Christmas, a lot of presents as well, and we must have been at the furthest gate away because we walked and walked and walked while carrying our son."
Mr Martin added that it was a struggle and the walk to baggage reclaim took 15 minutes.
He said: "It is not the airport's fault if they are stolen but if this has been happening for months I think they should at least make an effort to stop it and also tell families if they know there aren't any."
Mr Martin, who lives in London, made an official complaint to the airport.
He received a response from Gatwick's customer service team last week and was told that, out of the 260 pushchairs ordered by Gatwick, more than 200 have "disappeared" in the past six months.
The team said the airport attempted to work with airlines to try to get passengers' own pushchairs to them as soon as they disembark but this "proved to be full of complexities".
The pushchairs were brought in last year as part of Gatwick's initiative to be as family-friendly as possible.
Passengers are asked to leave the borrowed pushchairs at a drop-off point, where a staff member cleans them and returns them to the collection point ready for the next customers.
The Mothercare Nanu Strollers do not feature any stamp or label identifying them as airport property, although their seats are decorated in the same shade of blue as Gatwick's logo.
Similar pushchairs on the Mothercare website are priced £49.99.
A Gatwick Airport spokesman said efforts are made to continually replenish the stock of pushchairs, when staff realise some have gone missing, to make sure they don't completely run out.
The spokesman added that at the latest count there were about 100 of the pushchairs at the airport.
