UK’s Manchester airport faces ‘widespread disruption’ after power cut

A “significant” number of flights at the UK’s third-busiest airport were being delayed or cancelled Sunday (Jun 23) after a major power cut, the airport operator said.

The Manchester Airports Group, which also operates London Stansted and the East Midlands airports, said Manchester Airport had been “affected by a major power cut in the area earlier this morning.”

Power has now been restored at the international airport in the north of England, but passengers due to travel from Terminals One and Two were told to “not come to the airport until further notice” as flights were being cancelled.

Passengers for Terminal Three were told to come to the airport as normal but warned they “could be affected by delays”.

Some flyers took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to describe the “chaos”, with one passenger saying there was “baggage thrown on any carousel” and another saying they were “stuck on the plane”.

The UK’s travel industry has been hit by a series of disruptions in the last few years, including technical problems and industrial action affecting rail and air passengers.

Last month, a nationwide outage of immigration e-gates caused long delays for thousands of passengers.

In August last year, the country faced its worst air traffic control disruption in almost ten years due to a technical fault.