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”.
“This has caused widespread disruption,” the group said on social media.
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”.
The airport operator said that while passengers already checked in were scheduled to depart as planned, the disruption meant “some baggage may not be on those flights”.
“We will work with airlines and handling partners to reunite affected passengers with their luggage as soon as possible”, the group added.
The airline Jet2 – which operates from both terminals – said that as well as cancelling dozens of flights, it was unable to load bags onto planes as the airport’s baggage system remained “inoperable”.
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”.
Airline easyJet, which operates flights from Terminal One, warned of “very long queues” for security, and disruption to check in luggage, meaning passengers can only board flights with cabin bags.
In addition, some arriving flights were being diverted to other airports according to the airport statement, including London Heathrow and Birmingham.
Britain’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.
In May, a nationwide outage of immigration e-gates caused long delays for thousands of passengers.
In August 2023, the country faced its worst air traffic control disruption in almost 10 years due to a technical fault.