Disruption remains at Manchester Airport after power cut grounded flights

Disruption and long queues continued at Manchester Airport after a major power cut grounded all flights from two terminals.

The airport issued a statement on Monday morning saying that operations were back up and running and urged passengers to “prepare to travel as usual”.

But thousands remained affected early on Monday, with some waiting for alternative flights and others who managed to take off finding their luggage was not put on the plane.

Some travellers were complaining about long queues for bag drop-offs and a significant number of planes were still delayed.

Sian Hopwood from Lancashire was trying to get to Kefalonia in Greece, but her Sunday flight was cancelled. She was trying again on Monday.

“Yesterday showed how archaic this airport can be,” Ms Hopwood told Sky News.

“We had a rescheduled flight for 6am from Manchester and so got up at 2.30am and came to the airport at 4am this morning only to find out we had a big delay… we then rebooked.

“Our daughter is going with us but she has now gone to Leeds Bradford airport to get away.

“Sadly, what was a four-day holiday in Kefalonia is now a three-day holiday… but the good news is that I am writing this from our plane, and so hopefully we finally get off the ground!”

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Dozens of flights axed

The power outage, which hit systems in the early hours of Sunday, meant that about 70 departures and 50 arrivals were axed, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

No flights left from two of the three terminals for several hours, causing huge queues and a failure of baggage systems.

In a message to passengers, Jet2.com said some flights departed with “reduced or no luggage”, as the baggage system was “inoperable” during the outage.

It may take “some time” to get luggage back to owners, they added.

The disruption meant a number of arriving flights were diverted to other airports.

One Singapore Airlines flight arriving from Houston in Texas had to go to Heathrow while another, which came in from Singapore, landed at Gatwick.

An Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi Zayed International Airport was diverted to Birmingham Airport.

One passenger, Hayden Lewis, said his flight to the Greek island of Skiathos was cancelled after he was in the airport for about five hours.

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He later went to Birmingham Airport after being dropped off by his father and was hopeful of getting to his destination.

“We are now in Birmingham thanks to my dad who collected us from Manchester and dropped us in Birmingham,” Mr Lewis told Sky News on Sunday.

“All because easyJet don’t know when they could get us back out but want us to keep checking the app [along with the thousands of others].”

Chris Woodroofe, Manchester Airport’s managing director, apologised for the chaos and said an investigation into what happened is set to take place.

On Monday, a statement from the airport said it “is likely to be slightly busier than usual due to passengers affected by cancellations yesterday but we have extra staff in place and our resilience team is helping out”.

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