Passengers at Stansted and Birmingham airports were hit with long delays due to technical problems

Passengers at two of the UK’s busiest airports have suffered long delays due to technical problems – 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 delayed by more than two hours, as was a Tui flight to Las Palmas and a Ryanair flight to Kos.

Inbound flights from 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 as the cause was beyond the airlines control.

A Stansted spokesman said: “Power has now been restored and our teams are working hard to get systems back up and running as quickly as possible.

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

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

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

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

Scott Miller posted on X: “Absolutely shocking incompetence from the airport. They can’t process the number of passengers and yet after security the airport is empty.

“Birmingham Airport is always poor but they have managed to take it to a new low. Disaster. So many will miss flights.”

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

He later told X: “The pilot told those of us already on the plane that he could take off on time and blame the airport if the passengers missed him, but he said they wanted to wait. So we left 50 minutes late.”

An airport spokesman said: “We have seen the usual busy Monday morning at Birmingham Airport with customers queuing downstairs which is the new normal as the upstairs waiting area has been taken out of service as we are building our new security zone.

“This morning we encountered a technical issue with our security lanes, which aggravated the peak departure schedule and prevented us from operating.

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

“We would like to remind our customers that existing security restrictions remain in place. On average, 15% of bags are rejected because they do not comply with current security restrictions.

“For every customer, one non-compliant bag adds 10 minutes to the security search time.”

While some UK airports have completely upgraded their scanners to allow larger amounts of liquids and for laptops to be left in bags, most are still not compliant with government requirements for the new technology.