9 August 2012 Last updated at 05:59 ET

Manchester Airport diverts planes due to fog

Eight flights have been diverted from Manchester Airport due to fog, disrupting more than 1,000 passengers.

The airport's automatic landing system, which would normally take over in cases of fog, was switched off for maintenance, officials said.

The flights from Europe and Egypt were diverted to other North West and Midlands airports earlier.

Passengers were due to be driven or flown back to Manchester. Flights are now landing as usual at the airport.

An airport spokesman said: "We were doing routine maintenance on the automatic landing system as we didn't think there would be fog in August."

The flights, which were coming from Ibiza, Rhodes, Kos, Cyprus and Sharm-el-Sheikh, were diverted to Liverpool, Birmingham and East Midlands airports.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook, which had two flights affected, said they were diverted to nearby airports so they could get passengers back to Manchester quickly, and their planes were able to get back to the airport after the fog cleared in time for their next scheduled flights.