Manchester Airport Shutdown: Resilience Strategies for Power Outages

On the 23rd^st In June, an early morning power cut affected ground flights at Manchester Airport at Terminals 1 and 2 and caused inbound aircraft to be diverted.

The airport’s general manager, Chris Woodroofe, released the following message on social media:

“There was a large power spike in our electrical system due to a fault earlier this morning and that damaged some critical equipment in our departure security and departure baggage systems. So that means Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 were unable to depart planes today.

Consequently, we were unable to land those aircraft as arrivals as there was no space to park those aircraft at the airfield”.. ⁽¹⁾

Manchester Airport is the UK’s largest airport outside of London and by mid-afternoon around 66 outbound and 50 inbound flights had been cancelled. Although airport officials asked passengers to stay away from the main terminals, long queues formed outside the airport and reports suggested 90,000 passengers were affected by the power outage that lasted until the afternoon. However, by the next day, the airport reported that it was “it works smoothly and just “a little busier than usual” due to the rebooking of passengers who had missed their flights.

Dealing with power outages is not a new risk for business continuity practitioners. The BCI Horizon Scan 2023 report found that the second most disruptive event for organizations was the failure of critical infrastructure. However, the situation at Manchester Airport highlights that the loss of a critical utility is not always straightforward, even when back-up plans are in place. Reports suggested that the airport’s backup power was activated when the main power went out, but the situation was complicated when it cut and restarted at numerous intervals, damaging equipment in the process. This has led to criticism of the lack of back-up systems in place, as well as criticism of duty of care responsibilities towards travellers.⁽²⁾.

However, in terms of reputational damage, Manchester Airport has so far emerged relatively unscathed thanks to a successful and almost certainly pre-planned external communications strategy. Despite having their travel plans disrupted, passengers interviewed by news outlets were mostly positive about their communications. The most important were the use of staff to direct passengers (as the power outage affected display boards) and a social media strategy that apologised, explained the situation and gave a time frame for business as usual.

This immediate passenger feedback underscores the importance of business continuity practitioners working with communications teams to minimize reputational damage during an incident, especially in a world where reputational damage can be caused by anyone with a keyboard. The BCI Supply Chain Resilience 2023 report noted how a strong reputation is a resilience strategy in itself, as it can increase confidence from both customer and investor perspectives. This helps it maintain a reputational edge during difficult trading times, but the report also notes that it is difficult to quantify damage that is intangible or difficult to measure objectively, as many side effects may be invisible at first.

While the disruption at Manchester Airport caused considerable operational disruption, the reputational and financial repercussions were substantially reduced by applying tried and tested – and pre-planned – techniques.

BCI’s Ten Minute Continuity and Resilience Survey ends on the 8th^th July. Please consider contributing your views to help us better understand continuity and resilience best practices around the world.

CITED

⁽¹⁾ Manchester Airport | Facebook

⁽²⁾ Officers have left to deal with the aftermath of the mayhem of the current penalty at Manchester Airport | Travel weekly

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