Manchester Airport is “running as normal” but will be busier than usual, a spokesman said. Thousands of people remained affected on Monday morning.
According to Narbeh Minassian, reporter, and Tom Parmenter, national reporter
Mon Jun 24 2024 11:24 AM UK
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 operations were back up and running and urged passengers to “prepare to travel as usual”.
But thousands remained affected early Monday, with some waiting for replacement flights and others who managed to take off finding their luggage had not been put on the plane.
Some travelers complained of long lines at baggage claim and a significant number of planes were still delayed.
Sian Hopwood, from Lancashire, was trying to get to Kefalonia, Greece, but her flight on Sunday was cancelled. She tried again on Monday.
“Yesterday showed how archaic this airport can be,” Ms Hopwood told Sky News.
“We had a rescheduled 6am flight from Manchester so we got up at 2.30am and arrived at the airport at 4am this morning to find out we were very late… then rebooked.
“Our daughter is going with us but has now gone to Leeds Bradford Airport to run away.
“Unfortunately what was a four day holiday in Kefalonia is now a three day one… but the good news is I’m writing this from our plane so hopefully we’ll finally recover!”
Passengers stranded at Manchester Airport
Dozens of flights have gone down
Blackout, which hit the systems in the early hours of Sundaymeant that about 70 departures and 50 arrivals were clustered, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
No flights departed from two of the three terminals for several hours, causing huge queues and failure of baggage systems.
Jet2.com said in a message to passengers that some flights departed with “reduced or no baggage” because the baggage system was “inoperative” during the outage.
It may take “some time” to get the luggage back to the owners, they added.
The disruption meant that a number of inbound flights were diverted to other airports.
One Singapore Airlines flight arriving from Houston, Texas, had to fly to Heathrow, while the other, arriving from Singapore, landed at Gatwick.
An Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi Zayed International Airport has been diverted to Birmingham Airport.
One passenger, Hayden Lewis, said his flight to the Greek island of Skiathos was canceled after he had been at the airport for about five hours.
He later went to Birmingham Airport after being dropped off by his father, hoping to make it to his destination.
“We’re in Birmingham now thanks to my dad picking us up from Manchester and dropping us off in Birmingham,” Lewis told Sky News on Sunday.
“All because easyJet don’t know when they might get us back but they want us to keep checking the app [along with the thousands of others].”
Chris Woodroofe, chief executive of Manchester Airport, apologized for the chaos and said an investigation was underway into what happened.
On Monday, the airport said in a statement that it was “likely to be slightly busier than usual due to passengers affected by yesterday’s cancellation, but we have additional staff and our resilience team assisting us”.