Manchester Airport is back to normal after chaos during a power cut

Some passengers whose travel plans were thrown into chaos by a power outage at Manchester Airport face further delays as airlines rearrange grounded flights.

Airport bosses said all of its systems were back to “running as normal” but urged passengers to check the status of their flights before travelling.

It said airlines would be in contact with passengers whose flights were canceled on Sunday.

The airport said it would be “likely to be a bit busier than usual” throughout Monday due to passengers affected by the cancellation.

According to Manchester’s live departures board, there were several delays of an hour or more, including a flight to Ibiza at 7.30am BST due to depart at 8.30am.

The flight to Burgas, Bulgaria, scheduled to depart at 6:05 a.m., was delayed until 9:41 a.m.

Travel expert Simon Calder told BBC 5Live that Sunday’s events could have a “severe” impact on aviation by “knocking confidence”.

He said: “There are going to be some people who look at it, look at the stress and the anxiety and the upset and not knowing what’s going on and say ‘I’m not going to do that’.

“It will affect the airport business, maybe even more airport business.”

Mr Calder said the industry was “competitive”, with Manchester at risk of losing out to alternative airports.

He added: “If people are chatting in the pub and saying ‘well I used John Lennon Airport in Liverpool and it was fine, nice and empty, it seems to be working well’, then a cohort of people might actually move away from Manchester Airport. to another airport.”

The airport said it had deployed additional staff to help process the backlog and said passengers should generally arrive two hours before their flight for short-haul flights and three hours for long-haul flights.

From the early hours of Sunday morning, outgoing flights were suspended and scheduled arrivals were diverted to other UK airports.

By midday, 66 outbound flights (25% of all departures) and 50 arrivals (18% of all arrivals) had been canceled, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.

At about 7.30pm BST, airport bosses said flights had resumed and promised to carry out an investigation into what happened.

Passengers whose flights were canceled described the situation at the airport as “chaos” and photos shared on social media showed long queues and stopped baggage carousels overflowing with luggage.

There are reports of some people’s luggage not being loaded onto planes.

Kelvin Knaver from St Helens was due to fly to Amsterdam with EasyJet.

He told BBC North West Tonight: “It’s been a mess. There’s such a backlog it’s going to take forever.”

EasyJet recorded the highest number of cancellations. It said the delays were “outside of its control” and that it was “doing everything to minimize the impact of the disruption”.

One Singapore Airlines flight from Houston, Texas, was diverted to London’s Heathrow, while another departing from Singapore had to land at London’s Gatwick.

An Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi had to land at Birmingham Airport instead.

Chris Woodroofe, chief executive of Manchester Airport, said he apologized for the delay and that staff were “ensuring the impact [did] do not proceed” until the next few days.

The disruption was caused by a cable “fault” at the airport that caused a surge of power through the power grid, he said.