23 June 2024 06:25 pm Views - 25
All flights out of the two main terminals at Manchester Airport have been cancelled after a "significant power cut" caused widespread disruption
Passengers travelling through Terminals 1 and 2 have been told to stay away after the outage hit in the early hours, affecting baggage and security systems.
An airport spokesman said all flights from those terminals have been cancelled "until further notice".
Large queues have formed inside the airport, which is the UK's largest outside London, and more than 100 outbound flights have already been cancelled and inbound flights diverted.
Passengers flying via Terminal 3 should come to the airport as normal, but could face delays, an airport spokesman said.
Flights of those already at the airport would be prioritised as efforts to "work through that backlog" continued, a spokesman said.
The number of journeys the airport's departure board is showing as cancelled is expected to grow until at least mid afternoon.
The airport told the BBC inbound flights were diverted because “planes can’t take off” due to limited space.
This made it harder to accept aircraft, which would be sent elsewhere, the spokesman added.
The airport's back-up power systems came on when the main system went down, but the situation was complicated by mains power cutting out multiple times.
Airlines have said problems with baggage processing meant customers could only board with a cabin bag.
In a statement, Jet2 said handlers had been unable to load bags on to planes due to the outage.
Meanwhile an Easyjet spokesman said passengers could only board their flight with a cabin bag because of problems with the baggage system.
The disruption comes at the start of the summer holiday season at the UK's third-busiest airport, which has apologised to passengers.
An airport source said the power cut "literally knocked everything off".
Bobbi Hadgraft, who is travelling to watch England at Euro 2024, told BBC Radio Manchester she arrived at the airport at about 04:00 BST to see "enormous queues" outside Terminal 1.
"We were worried we would miss our flight," she said, adding the power outage had affected display boards and scanners so staff had to direct passengers around the site.
Olwyn Hocking said one member of staff looked like they were trying to hide as “hundreds and hundreds of people poured into the airport, with not a clue there was problem”.
She said it was “chaos”.
Balázs Fazeka, who was due to fly to Montenegro for a week-long holiday with his wife and eight-month-old baby, arrived at 02:00 BST and, after eight hours standing in queues, found out the flight had been cancelled.
“There are bigger issues in life than this," he said, but added the lack of communication from the airport had been “quite frustrating”.
Another passenger, Phillip Banfield, said his plane had taken off while he was stuck after going through passport control.
He said he was surrounded by an “enormous number of passengers, stranded, wondering how they’re going to continue onwards journeys".
It had been "virtually impossible" to get through check-in and security, which was only feasible if you were just carrying hand luggage, he added.
Many passengers have been trying to find out about their rights if a flight is cancelled or delayed. (BBC)