Power cut sparks airport chaos at Manchester

THOUSANDS of holidaymakers and business fliers were grounded after a power cut caused chaos at Manchester airport - Britain's third-biggest.

- Jan Disley

Huge queues packed the terminals, buildings lost lighting and many flights were delayed or cancelled. Some that managed to take off did so without hold luggage and many travellers faced anxious waits to be reunited with their bags.

Airport chiefs said at midday yesterday there would be no flights at all from Terminals 1 and 2 "until further notice". Airlines involved included easyJet, Virgin and Tui. Arriving passengers were also affected as their planes had to be diverted.

The two-hour outage had been resolved by around 3.30am but the knock-on effects lasted all day, and passenger Dan Strachan described the resulting scenes as "carnage".