Stansted and Birmingham airport passengers hit by long delays due to technical issues

‘After queuing for two hours at Birmingham airport I missed my flight’ – passenger Joe Morris

Going places? Departure gates at Stansted airport in Essex (Simon Calder)

Passengers at two of the UK’s busiest airports have experienced long delays due to technical issues – with flights this evening still affected.

London Stansted, Britain’s fourth-busiest airport, “experienced a partial power outage” on Monday morning. It affected check-in, security and baggage systems.

Some Jet2 departures to Turkey, Spain and Portugal were over two hours late, as was a Tui flight to Las Palmas and Ryanair to Kos.

Inbound flights from the affected destinations are also delayed, with a Jet2 flight from Lanzarote now expected at 9.30pm rather than 7.30pm. The Ryanair flight from Kos back to Stansted is estimated to be three hours late.

Passengers will not qualify for delay compensation since the cause was beyond the airlines’ control.

A spokesperson for Stansted said: “Power is now restored, and our teams are working hard to get systems back up and running as quickly as possible.

“However, it is taking slightly longer than usual for passengers to pass through the terminal while systems recover. Flights are operating as normal, but passengers are advised to allow plenty of time for their travel and check with their airline for the most up-to-date flight information.

“We apologies to passengers for the inconvenience and disruption to the journeys today.”

Passengers at Birmingham airport, meanwhile. experienced long waits for security checks – with some missing flights.

Joe Morris wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “After queuing for two hours at Birmingham airport I managed to get the staff to take me through security, only to miss my flight and for Ryanair to leave on time (for once) with a half-empty plane.”

Scott Miller posted on X: “Absolute shocking incompetence by the airport. They cannot process the number of passengers and yet after security the airport is empty.

“Birmingham airport is always poor but they’ve managed to take it to a new low level. Disaster. So many will miss flights.”

Tom Marshall wrote: “Birmingham airport queues are so slow we’re now on a plane 10 minutes past departure time, waiting for 80 more passengers stuck in queues.”

He later said on X: “The pilot told those of us already on the plane that they could just take off on time and blame the airport if passengers missed it, but he said they were making a point of waiting. So we departed 50 minutes late.”

An airport spokesperson said: “We saw a usual busy Monday morning at Birmingham airport with customers queuing downstairs, which is the new normal, as the upstairs queuing area has been taken out of service as we construct our new security area.

“This morning we encountered a technical issue with our security lanes, which compounded the peak departure schedule and hindered our operation.

“We sincerely apologise to our customers for the level of service that they received.

“We wish to remind our customers that existing security restrictions remain in place. On average 15 per cent of bags are rejected as they are not compliant with current security restrictions.

“For each customer, a non-compliant bag adds 10 minutes on top of their security search time.”

While some UK airports have fully upgraded their scanners to allow larger quantities of liquids and for laptops to be left in bags, most are not yet compliant with the government’s requirement for new technology.