Passengers faced disruption at Manchester Airport overnight after seven flights were diverted and at least 17 others were held in the skies when a man got onto the airfield. Travellers described how their flights were diverted to East Midlands and Birmingham Airports, and one passenger praised airport staff for how they 'seamlessly' handled the situation.
Incident details
Shortly after 11.20pm on Friday August 21, police were called to the airport after the man 'encroached' onto the airfield. The incident lasted around 15 minutes, a spokesperson for Manchester Airport said, before he was taken to hospital from the scene. It is understood the incident was mental health-related. The spokesperson confirmed the incident was resolved and flights are now back to normal. A temporary fix has been put in place following the security breach.
Flights diverted
Among the seven diverted flights were a TUI flight from Boa Vista in Cape Verde, which according to Flightradar24 had to be diverted to East Midlands, a Ryanair flight from Agadir in Morocco diverted to Birmingham, and an easyJet flight from Barcelona diverted to Liverpool. Around 17 flights due to arrive at the airport were held, which had a knock-on effect on arrivals and caused delays.
Passenger experiences
Rai Hirst from Bolton was flying back from Marrakesh with his wife and daughter following a family holiday. They were on board a TUI flight which landed at around 1.20am, shortly behind a delayed Jet2 flight which landed at 1.13am. He said they noticed something was up when they kept circling before coming into land and that they were taken to Terminal 1 before catching a shuttle bus to Terminal 2.
Rai told the Manchester Evening News: "We've since looked at the final approach on FlightRadar and you can see we were circling above Macclesfield and Buxton. When we came into land we saw the red lights of the cranes in the city centre and thought not long to go and then we circled around and saw them again, we thought the approach was taking a long time."
"When we landed the cabin crew said we would be going to Terminal 1, which is now closed, so we thought that was a bit strange. A few people in the cabin were grumbling, obviously it's hard when you've been flying and you want to get home. We left the plane via an airbridge and walked through Terminal 1 which was desolate, but every staff member we saw was so friendly, and said things like 'good morning' and 'welcome home'. When we were outside at the bus terminal there was an amazing bloke. I can't recall his name but he was so chirpy and everybody loved him."
"He just said: 'come on now, let's get this done together and we can get home and have an English cup of tea.' Once we arrived at Terminal 2 everything was fine."
Rai praised airport staff for how they handled the situation. He added: "We had no idea what was going on and what the incident was, but the airport was 10 out of 10. After learning this morning that it was because somebody was ill and something happened on the ground, well it put's everything into perspective - we're on our way back from holiday but someone's in their darkest moment. For minutes of inconvenience is worth it to know somebody is safe. The airport response was seamless, almost as if it was rehearsed. The team on the ground was just brilliant and so were the TUI staff."
"The staff went above and beyond in the early hours of the morning. They made sure everybody was safe, everybody was ok. They answered any questions. I didn't even think there were that many staff who worked at the airport overnight. I just hope that person gets all the help they need."
Commenting on the Manchester Evening News Facebook page, Angela Slater described her experience of being on board the TUI flight from Cape Verde which was diverted to East Midlands Airport. She wrote: "Our flight from Cape Verde was one affected. Had to divert to the East Midlands, refuel and then come back to Manchester. Should have landed around 11.30pm instead [it was] 1.30am-ish, got home at 3.30am. But the flight [crew and captain] were amazing, kept us informed as much as they could and did what they had to do in a crazy situation. We didn't have enough fuel to stay up in the air for an unguaranteed time. Think we did about 7 laps before diverting. Never ever seen so many planes up in the sky when actually been on a flight before."
Meanwhile X user Gaz, @LUFCGAZ84, described being diverted to Liverpool. Responding to a post on X by the account Squawk, they wrote: "We have been diverted to Liverpool. After being held for a good half hour." In a further post they wrote: "Our flight has just flown back to MAN without the passengers. [To be honest] it's worked out better heading home from Liverpool in the end as I imagine MAN will be chaos now with all the delayed flights that were allowed to land."
Another X user, Jam Pedro @TheLifeOfJam, ended up at Birmingham Airport. They wrote in a post on X: "One person went on the runway now we cant fly home. We are stuck on birmingham airport runway, and we were meant to land at 11:30pm at Manchester."
