A simillar thing happened to me on BY 75 in Dec 2000 G-BYAP
The surge occured 30 secs into the flight and was (for the 10 secs or so that the banging noise lasted) very scary.
Once the noise stopped I remember thinking "well we're still in the air."
As an avid enthusaist I told myself that we were ok and was reasured by the announcement form the flight-deck.
The problem came when I tried to fly home the follwing week, I was vey nervous and stayed nervous for about a year but am ok now.
In terms of how it was handled on the ground it was ok as we retured to LGW but I would imagine how it would be diffcult to get the right staffing levels at an outstation at short notice