A security breach at Manchester Airport (MAN) left more than 20 flights disrupted on Friday night and into the early hours of Saturday, including one TUI flight that declared a low fuel emergency. The airport was forced to suspend arrivals after a man made his way onto the active airfield, with seven flights diverting to other UK airports and 17 more entering prolonged holding patterns.

Despite apprehending the man within 15 minutes and quickly reinstating normal operations, the knock-on effect of the breach left many flights delayed by several hours. A section of the airport’s perimeter fence was found damaged and was temporarily repaired before arrivals were permitted to land.

Manchester Airport Perimeter Breach Impacts Over 20 Flights

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The incident occurred at around 11:20 PM local time on Friday after a man breached a fence and entered the airfield. This led to its closure for approximately 15 minutes, which had a significant impact on more than 20 inbound flights. Seven of these flights would ultimately divert to alternate airports, including three TUI Airways flights landing at East Midlands Airport (EMA), one Ryanair and one easyJet flight to Birmingham International Airport (BHX), an easyJet flight to Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LPL), and a Jet2 flight to Leeds Bradford Airport (LBA).

One of these services — TUI flight 439 from Boa Vista (BVC) in Cape Verde — ended up declaring a fuel emergency after circling near Manchester. A passenger onboard the Boeing 737 MAX reported on social media that they made around seven loops above Manchester before diverting to East Midlands to refuel. This flight ended up departing EMA at 01:17 AM the next day, arriving in Manchester with a delay of over four hours. Simple Flying contacted Manchester Airport for comment and received the following statement:

“A person encroached onto the airfield shortly before midnight on Friday. They were quickly apprehended by staff and arrested by Greater Manchester Police. The airfield was closed for around 15 minutes while the incident was handled and the breach was repaired. That resulted in 7 diverted flights and 17 delayed flights.”

Suspected Mental Health Incident

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Greater Manchester Police (GMP) said it was called to the airport after receiving reports that a male had been located airside. The individual was arrested before being taken to hospital for assessment. A Manchester Airport spokesperson said that the individual appeared to be “severely mentally unwell,” adding that it does not believe “this was a malicious incident.“

While several flights were affected on Friday evening, operations returned to normal by Saturday morning. MAN is the third-busiest airport in the UK behind London Heathrow (LHR) and London Gatwick (LGW), handling over 32 million passengers in 2025, setting a new record for the airport.

Fuel Emergencies And Late-Night Diversions

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Diversions can prove more complicated after dark than daytime operations, as many airports limit nighttime flying or restrict operations to a single runway. For example, Manchester Airport has two parallel runways, but only allows simultaneous use between 06:00 and 22:00 before shifting to single runway operations overnight.

Ground capacity can also be shorter during late hours, with limited capacity to handle a sudden influx of additional flights. Fuel emergencies are a more serious safety concern and are declared when a flight is set to land with less fuel than its final reserve fuel, which is equivalent to around 30 minutes of holding. One high-profile incident at London Gatwick in July led to nine aircraft declaring fuel emergencies after a stricken British Airways jet shut down the airport’s single runway.

Manchester has also been at the center of a similar emergency before that saw the UK’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) recommend procedural changes. In December 2023, a TUI Boeing 787-8 was holding for Manchester on arrival from Cancun (CUN) during high winds, when the captain diverted to East Midlands, only to be told the airport could not accept the widebody due to a lack of capacity. The flight then diverted to Birmingham, where wind shear forced a go-around before an emergency fuel declaration.