Manchester Airport declares 'business as usual' after power cut chaos

Manchester Airport has declared it is now 'business as usual' following a day of travel disruption caused by a major power cut.

All flights out of Terminals 1 and 2 were cancelled 'until further notice' following a huge power cut in the early hours of this morning (Sunday). Passengers were told to stay away from both terminals after the outage.

Power has since been restored but baggage and security systems were continuing to be affected until this afternoon. More than 100 flights were due to depart from the airport today, leaving thousands of people facing delays and cancellations.

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This evening a spokesman for Manchester Airport confirmed the problems had now been rectified although passengers should still check with their airline before turning up.

"We are back up and running now. Flights are going as they should be. Check-in has resumed as it should be. It's all moving as it should be," said the spokesman, who declared 'business as usual'.

The spokesman re-iterated, however, that passengers should still check with their airlines before coming to the airport in case those airlines had altered their schedules. But the airport's main functions were now operating as normal, he said.

Earlier, in a video shared by Manchester Airport on X - formerly Twitter - its managing director, Chris Woodroofe, issued his "sincere apologies" to those impacted.

He said there had been "a big power spike" in the airport's electrical system following "a failure".

"That's damaged some really key equipment for our departure security and our departures baggage systems," he added. "That's meant Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 haven't been able to depart aircraft today.

"As a result, we haven't had those aircraft be able to land either as arrivals because there's no space to park those aircraft on the airfield."

Mr Woodrofe said the airport was working with airlines to book passengers on future flights.

"It's a very difficult situation, I couldn't be more sorry," he said, adding that he expects the airport to return to "normal operations" tomorrow.

Passengers flying via Terminal 3 have been told to go to the airport as normal "unless advised otherwise by their airline".

Travellers have taken to social media to post images of major queues and shared their frustration with the airport. Some have reported instances where some baggage was not on flights.

An image shared with the Manchester Evening News showed a sea of suitcases left inside one of the terminals.

Airline easyJet, which operates flights from terminal one, said there were “very long queues” for security and disruption to hold baggage processing, meaning passengers could board flights only with cabin luggage.

Meanwhile, a number of arriving flights have been diverted to other airports.