Passengers have been told to stay away from Manchester Airport after a “major” power cut disrupted a significant number of flights.

The warning for those travelling through Terminals 1 and 2 comes after the outage hit early hours on Sunday morning.

Large queues of people have formed inside the airport, where a number of flights have been cancelled, with further disruption expected through the day, and some arriving flights diverted to other airports.

Passengers flying through Terminal 3 should come to the airport as normal, but could face delays, an airport spokesman said.

The flights of those already at the airport would be prioritised as efforts to “work through that backlog” continued, a spokesman said.

The disruption comes at the start of the summer holiday season at the UK’s third-busiest airport.

An airport source said the power cut “literally knocked everything off”.

It has also affected other businesses in the surrounding area, including major logistics firms nearby.

Bobbi Hadgraft, who is travelling to watch England at Euro 2024, told BBC Radio Manchester she arrived at the airport at about 04:00 BST to see “enormous queues” outside Terminal 1.

“We were worried we would miss our flight,” she said, adding the power outage had affected display boards and scanners so staff had to direct passengers around the site.

Others have used social media to complain about long queues for check-in desks and passport control, as well as a lack of communication from staff in the “chaos”.

Pictures and video footage showed long queues of people, some waiting in near darkness. 

The airport said its electricity supply went off at about 01:30 but has since been restored, although it would take time to get systems up and running again.