Manchester, United Kingdom – A power outage at Manchester Airport on Sunday resulted in at least 100 flights being grounded and left approximately 90,000 passengers stranded, causing significant disruptions to travel plans.
In an update, airport officials announced that check-in and departures at Terminals 1 and 2 have resumed, and they do not anticipate further disruptions on Monday. However, the duration to clear the backlog of cancelled flights remains uncertain.
According to aviation analytics company Cirium, by Sunday lunchtime, more than 66 outbound and 50 inbound flights were affected by the outage.
Chris Woodroofe, the managing director of Manchester Airport, expressed regret over the incident and attributed the disruption to a malfunctioning cable that triggered a surge, leading to the shutdown of security systems and baggage screening.
“The power outage primarily impacted Terminals 1 and 2. We assure passengers that flights scheduled for Monday will proceed as planned,” Woodroofe stated.
“When Terminals 1 and 2 are unable to process departing passengers for an entire morning, it inevitably causes a significant impact. I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused and assure you that we are taking steps to prevent any lingering effects into tomorrow,” he added.
Images circulated on social media depicted crowded airport terminals with thousands of bewildered travelers.
Several incoming flights were diverted to alternative airports; for instance, an aircraft from Houston, Texas, was rerouted to London’s Heathrow, while another from Singapore landed at Gatwick.
