Power fault grounds planes at Manchester Airport

Thirteen thousand passengers were affected by flight cancellations at Manchester Airport yestereay after a refuelling problem.

The airport said 87 flights, in and out of the airport, had to be cancelled after a problem emerged yesterday afternoon leaving thousands of passengers stranded on grounded planes.

An airport spokesman said a “power issue” had affected its fuel supply.

It said it expects a “small number” of delays and cancellations today, May 20, but expects “scheduled flights” to operate as normal.

The spokesman said yesterday: “Due to a power issue this afternoon there is currently an issue with the fuel supply at the airport.

“Engineers are … on site to fix the issue and we are working with airlines to try and minimise the impact.”

It is understood that all fuelling at the site had stopped.

The airport, which remained open, urged people to check with their airline for information and updates.

Planes that needed to refuel were unable to leave and some flights had been diverted to Liverpool and Birmingham.

Some passengers were forced to sit on their grounded planes for several hours before being de-planed and returned to the airport’s terminals.

Others said they have been told the problems would persist until 22.00 last night, May 19.

Rachael Smith, 36, from Edinburgh, had been due to fly with easyJet to Preveza in Greece on business but her flight was cancelled.

Speaking from the aircraft, she told the Manchester Evening News: “I’ve been sitting her close on three hours now, which funnily enough was the flight time. We’ve just been told the flight has been cancelled. We’re waiting to be taken off but there’s a backlog. So it will be a hotel and hopefully a flight tomorrow.

“The crew have brought us water. It’s not their fault at the end of the day. It would have been nice to know (what the problem was) a little bit sooner.”

After half-an-hour of waiting she said the captain informed passengers ‘we’ve got no fuel’ but it took another two hours of sitting on the stationary aircraft to be told of the ‘system failure’ affecting refuelling.

“I think everyone is a bit bored and a bit angry,” said Rachael.

The problem led to knock-on effects at airports around Europe.

Chloe Tomkinson tweeted: “No planes allowed into Manchester airport, currently sitting in Paris on the tarmac and have been for the past 2 hours.”