broadgage said:

Chaotic scenes widely reported. Does the airport not have standby generation for such an event ?Able to supply at least 25% of normal lighting, and 100% of other services, excluding non essential retail and catering. And UPS for the most critical loads.

This is far more complex than it would at first appear. And yes, all of the things you stated ... and more ... are generally covered.

There are requirements for standby and backup power for certain functions in airports. Supplies to airfield functions are typically separate to those for the Terminals, and have their own standby generators, which are usually started even in low visibility conditions.

Supplies to Terminals and other facilities are taken on their own merits, and yes there are often "dual fed dual supplies" and "UPS/CPS" systems ... and things even in terminal will run for many hours ... but if an incoming supply failure to a terminal is predicted to persist for a pre-determined duration, if memory serves, 4 hours, the approach typically is to cease operations.

In today's incident at Manchester, however, the BBC reports that "a fault with a cable had caused a power surge that took down security systems and baggage screening" ... which means a major disruption to security systems. This would affect the "go/no-go" decision on flights for safety and security reasons.

gkenyon said:

This would affect the "go/no-go" decision on flights for safety and security reasons.

Yes, but that is merely inconvenient. Even if ATC could not land aircraft, they would at least have to be able to communicate with them in the event of diversion.

Lighting in terminals would be pretty important; catering not!

well it will be interesting to know more in due course as to exactly what has happened. Cables breaking and causing over-voltges  are often as simple as a lost neutral, but given the scale it sounds more like something nasty has happened at HV.

In any case I suspect that the plan for a power cut is similar to that for a fire or anything else with unclear disruption potential - beyond a critical size of event that can be handled locally, the 'plan B' as it were to shut things down in a safe way.

Awkward if  its your flight cancelled of course, but should not be a total surprise this sort of event happens from time to time - unlike the fire drill this one has probably never been rehearsed.

Mike

well it will be interesting to know more in due course as to exactly what has happened. Cables breaking and causing over-voltges  are often as simple as a lost neutral, but given the scale it sounds more like something nasty has happened at HV.

In any case I suspect that the plan for a power cut is similar to that for a fire or anything else with unclear disruption potential - beyond a critical size of event that can be handled locally, the 'plan B' as it were to shut things down in a safe way.

Awkward if  its your flight cancelled of course, but should not be a total surprise this sort of event happens from time to time - unlike the fire drill this one has probably never been rehearsed.

Mike