A system and method for providing backup recovery from outage at a primary gateway in a satellite communication system. Upon detecting an alert indicative of an outage, communication between the primary gateway and a plurality of terminals located within spot beams serviced by the primary gateway is suspended. A pre-switchover routine is performed to initialize a backup gateway capable of being substituted for the primary gateway, and a switchover routine is performed to transfer operations from the primary gateway to the backup gateway. Communication is subsequently enabled between the backup gateway and the plurality of terminals.