Power cut causes flight chaos at UK’s Manchester Airport

Manchester Airport, Britain’s third busiest, canceled more than 100 flights on Sunday, affecting thousands of passengers, following a major power outage.

At least 20 percent of all departing and arriving flights have been cancelled, a Manchester Airport spokesperson said, adding that it expected further disruption.

Cirium, an earlier aviation analytics company, said 66 departures and 50 inbound flights were canceled, with easyJet experiencing the highest number of cancellations.

Manchester Airports Group, which also operates London Stansted and East Midlands airports, said the airport had been “affected by a significant power outage in the area earlier this morning” and passengers at two of the three terminals were asked to stay away.

The power outage led to problems with airport security and baggage systems, according to Chris Woodroofe, the airport’s general manager. Flights resumed in the afternoon.

Woodroofe said on social media that he expected flights to resume “normal operations” on Monday.

Airline Jet2 said that as well as canceling dozens of flights, it was unable to load luggage onto planes because the baggage system remained “unusable”.

EasyJet warned of “very long queues” for security reasons and said passengers could only board flights with cabin bags.

Some arriving flights were diverted to other airports including London Heathrow and Birmingham.

Some travelers took to X, formerly Twitter, to describe the “chaos”, with one passenger saying he was waiting for his luggage after landing after midnight and another saying he was “stuck on the plane”.

The UK travel industry has been hit in recent years by a series of technical disruptions and strikes which have affected rail and air passengers.

Last month, a nationwide outage of electronic immigration gates led to long delays for thousands of passengers. In August last year, Britain faced the worst air traffic control disruption in years due to a technical problem.

aks/nmc/tw