Stansted Airport power failure causes passenger delays

Stansted Airport railway station was evacuated

Passengers at Stansted Airport were stranded on trains and planes after a power failure affected the entire airport site.

The airport railway station was initially evacuated after its fire alarms went off on Sunday.

An airport spokesman said a "power outage" affected the whole site and systems had to be rebooted.

He said restrictions were put in place on arriving passengers to prevent further overcrowding in the terminal.

Passengers took to social media showing crowds of people in the terminal and queues on escalators, while others said they were stuck on trains or on the tarmac in arriving planes.

'Dangerous'

One man, who did not want to be named, said he and his young family were in a "chaos queue" at security for about two hours.

He said: "People were pushing and arguing an the boards just kept on saying to people to load up on the gates, despite there being no way to get there. Someone could have been majorly injured. It was dangerous."

He said communication was poor and no announcements could be made because the outage meant the airport's loud speaker system was also rebooting.

The aftermath was "massively stressful and so unnecessary", he added.

On Sunday afternoon rail operator Greater Anglia posted on X - formerly Twitter - to say "a controlled evacuation" was under way and that trains were unable to run to or from the airport.

"No fire has been found at the station, but a burnt switch in an electrical room has been found," it said.

Power was returned to the terminal and rail station by 23:00 BST on Sunday and the airport apologised for inconveniences caused.

A spokesperson for the airport said contingency measures were put in place quickly.

He said: "There were around 100,000 people using the airport so it was a very busy day, so a power outage would undoubtedly affect the airport experience, hence we apologised for the inconvenience this issue caused to passengers."

Additional staff were deployed to help passengers, he said.