A power cut will halt all flights from Manchester Airport’s two terminals

All flights from Manchester Airport’s two main terminals have been canceled after a ‘significant power cut’ caused widespread disruption

Passengers traveling through Terminals 1 and 2 were told to stay away after the outage in the morning, which affected baggage and security systems.

An airport spokesman said all flights from those terminals had been canceled “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 canceled and inbound flights diverted.

Passengers flying through Terminal 3 should arrive at the airport as usual but could face delays, an airport spokesman said.

Flights of those already at the airport will be prioritized as efforts to “work through the backlog” continue, the spokesman said.

The airport told the BBC that inbound flights had been diverted because “planes cannot take off” due to limited space.

This made it difficult to accept aircraft that would have been sent elsewhere, the spokesman added.

Back-up power systems at the airport switched on when the main system went down, but the situation was complicated by several mains power outages.

The airlines said that problems with baggage processing meant that customers could only board with hand luggage.

In a statement, Jet2 said handlers were unable to load luggage onto planes due to the outage.

Meanwhile, an Easyjet spokesman said passengers could only board their flight with hand luggage due to problems with the baggage system.

The disruption comes at the start of the summer holiday season at Britain’s third busiest airport, which has apologized to passengers.

An airport source said the power outage “literally knocked everything down”.

Bobbi Hadgraft, who is traveling to watch England at Euro 2024, told BBC Radio Manchester that she arrived at the airport at around 04:00 BST to see “huge queues” outside Terminal 1.

“We were afraid we were going to miss our flight,” she said, adding that the power outage affected display panels and scanners, forcing staff to reroute passengers around the site.

Olwyn Hocking said one member of staff looked like he was trying to hide as “hundreds and hundreds of people streamed into the airport with no idea there was a problem”.

She said it was “chaos”.

Balázs Fazeka, who was due to fly to Montenegro for a week’s holiday with his wife and eight-month-old baby, arrived at 02:00 BST and after queuing for eight hours, found the flight had been cancelled.

“There are bigger problems in life than this,” he said, but added that the lack of communication from the airport was “quite frustrating”.

Another passenger, Phillip Banfield, said his plane took off while he was stuck after going through passport control.

He said he was surrounded by “huge numbers of passengers who were stranded and wondering how they were going to continue their journey”.

It was “virtually impossible” to get through check-in and security, which was only possible if you only had hand luggage, he added.

Many passengers have struggled to find out their rights in the event of a flight cancellation or delay.

Complaints of long queues at check-in desks and passport control, as well as a lack of communication from staff amid the “chaos”, flooded social media.

Pictures and videos showed long lines of people, some waiting in near darkness.

The airport said its power went out at about 01:30 but has since been restored, although it will take some time to get systems up and running again.

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