LONDON, June 24 – Flights are expected to “run as usual” on Monday after heavy disruption hit passengers over the weekend due to a major power cut, Manchester Airport said, reported German news agency (dpa).
The outage, which hit systems in the early hours of Sunday, resulted in the cancellation of 66 outbound flights, accounting for 25 per cent of all departures, and 50 inbound flights, representing 18 per cent of all arrivals, by lunchtime, according to aviation analytics company Cirium.
The airport had announced no flights were departing from terminals one and two, leading to huge queues and disruptions to baggage processing throughout the day.
In social media post on Sunday night, Manchester Airport stated it is not anticipating any “further disruption” for Monday.
A statement said: “We would like to apologise to all those affected by the disruption in Terminals 1 and 2 today. Tomorrow’s schedule is expected to run as usual with no further disruption. Passengers should plan to travel to the airport as normal, checking in two hours ahead of their flight for short-haul, and three hours for long-haul.
The statement added: “It is always advisable to check the status of your flight before you travel to the airport. Airlines will be in touch with passengers to reschedule cancelled flights as we work with airlines, baggage handling agents and other partners to make sure passengers whose bags did not make it onto the flights are reunited with their belongings as soon as possible.
“We thank passengers for their patience today and we would also like to thank all of our staff, airlines and onsite partners for their hard work and resilience.”
Earlier on Sunday, managing director Chris Woodroofe told BBC News, “a fault with a cable had caused a power surge that took down security systems and baggage screening.”
“When Terminal 1 and 2 can’t depart passengers for an entire morning, there is going to be an impact. And I’m really sorry that happened. We’re now making sure as we look forward, that the impact doesn’t carry on into tomorrow,” Woodroofe remarked.
He assured an investigation into what happened is set to take place.
The disruption also meant a number of arriving flights were diverted to other airports.
One Singapore Airlines flight arriving from Houston in the US state of Texas had to go to London Heathrow (some 250 kilometres south of Manchester), while another, which came in from Singapore, was forced to land at London Gatwick. An Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi Zayed International Airport was diverted to Birmingham Airport (some 110 kilometres south of Manchester).
