Flights from two Manchester airport terminals cancelled after power cut
Flights from Two Manchester Airport Terminals Cancelled After Power Cut
Outage causes major delays as officials advise people due to travel from terminals one and two not to come to the airport.
All flights out of terminals one and two at Manchester Airport have been cancelled after a “significant power cut” early on Sunday morning. The airport has advised all passengers due to travel from its two biggest terminals not to come to the airport, as boarding card and baggage-screening systems were affected by the outage, leading to huge delays.
In a statement on Sunday morning, the airport said “a major power cut in the area earlier this morning” had caused “widespread disruption and a significant number of flights” to be cancelled or delayed. It added that luggage might not be on flights that were able to leave.
Huge queues formed inside the terminal buildings as passengers attempted to check in for flights that were still scheduled to leave. However, it was announced just after midday that all flights would be cancelled until further notice.
Rick and Susan Newby should have been on an easyJet flight to Lanzarote at 7 am. After arriving at the airport at 5 am, checking in their luggage, and heading to the gate, they found out it had been cancelled. They managed to secure a booking on a Jet2 flight to the same destination in the afternoon, departing from terminal two, and were patiently waiting outside the building to check back in. However, an email came through just before 1 pm saying that, too, had been cancelled.
“We paid nearly £500 extra for some flights to get out there today. And they let me book that at 11.30 am this morning,” said Susan. “Oh my god, I can’t believe it.”
“All the airport is open, all the shops are open, all the lights are on, hot food is being made and served — it’s like, what power cut? What is this power outage?” said Rick. “We just don’t understand what is going on.”
Back in the terminal building, hundreds of people were queuing up in front of the easyJet check-in desks, hoping to get on flights still scheduled to leave on Sunday afternoon. However, many said they had been told they would only be able to travel with hand luggage, as the conveyor belts needed to check in hold luggage still were not working correctly.
Sharon Hudson, waiting for a flight to Egypt, said: “How are we supposed to go on holiday for two weeks with just hand luggage?”
Manchester Airport, the third busiest in the UK, said it was “working to get those passengers already at the airport on to flights as soon as possible.” Passengers due to arrive on flights at the airport were being diverted to other airports, it said.
“Passengers due to fly from terminal three should come to the airport as normal unless advised otherwise by their airline, but could be affected by delays,” the airport added. Problems with the power supply in the local area were thought to have affected the airport, as well as other buildings nearby.
Travel expert Simon Calder said the systems at Manchester Airport were in “extreme disarray” as a result of the power cut.
“The vast majority of passengers will be using terminals one and two. There are crowds of many thousands of people there, they’ve been there since the early hours, no flights leaving,” he told LBC.
He said the airport was going to instruct airlines to “cancel a whole swathe of flights for several hours … in a bid to recover the operation later today.”
“People who are on their way to the airport will almost certainly find they’ll get a message saying their flight isn’t going,” he said.
Calder added that there was an equal number of people waiting to fly back to Manchester who were also going to be stranded by the power cut.
“All of this is happening at a time when aviation is just getting into the peak season, with very heavy bookings on flights. If you knock out a whole load of those, then it’s going to get very messy, and you could find people waiting several days to get where they need to be,” he said.
