LONDON: Manchester airport, Britain's third busiest, canceled more than 100 flights affecting thousands of passengers on Sunday following a major power outage.
At least 20% of all return flights were cancelled, a Manchester Airport spokesperson said, adding that further disruption was expected.
Earlier, aviation analytics firm Cirium said 66 departures and 50 inbound flights had been cancelled, with easyJet experiencing the highest number of cancellations.
Manchester Airports Group, which also operates London Stansted and East Midlands airports, said the airport had been “affected by a major power outage in the area this morning” and passengers at two of the three terminals were asked to leave. kept away.
The power outage caused problems with airport security and baggage systems, according to Chris Woodroofe, the airport's general manager. Flights resumed in the afternoon.
Woodroofe said on social media that he expected flights to “return to normal operations” on Monday.
The airline Jet2 stated that, in addition to canceling dozens of flights, it was unable to load suitcases onto the planes because the baggage system remained “inoperable.”
EasyJet warned of “very long queues” for security reasons and said passengers could only board flights with hand luggage.
Some arriving flights were diverted to other airports, including London Heathrow and Birmingham.
Some travelers took to X, formerly Twitter, to describe the “chaos”, with one passenger saying he had been waiting for his bags after landing after midnight and another saying he was “stuck on the plane”.
The UK travel industry has been hit by a series of technical disruptions and strikes in recent years affecting rail and air passengers.
Last month, an outage of electronic immigration gates across the country caused long delays for thousands of passengers. In August last year, Britain faced the worst disruption to air traffic control in years due to a technical fault.
