Heathrow Airport in London sank into chaos after a fire on an electric substation that closed work on one of Europe’s busiest airways, forcing the airport to cancel or divert more than 1,000 flights on Friday and remove a worldwide journal.
Heathrow’s chief executive, Thomas Woldbye, described the disorder as “unprecedented”, telling reporters on Friday that the airport had lost power equal to that of a medium -sized city and that although a reserve transformer worked as it should have been.
Some flights continued late on Friday. But Mr Woldbye said: “We expect to be fully operational, so 100 % of the operation as a normal day” by Saturday.
The Metropolitan Police in London later said on Friday: “After the initial evaluation, we do not treat this incident as a suspect, although investigations remain in progress.” Police said anti -terrorism officials would lead the investigation into the cause of the fire, which broke out on Thursday night at an electric substation northeast of Heathrow.
It was too early on Friday to calculate the exact cost of the interruption. But the disorder raised questions about the durability of Britain’s largest airport and why it seems to depend so much on a single electrical substation.
Residents of the neighborhood Hayes near the airport described two loud strokes and seeing “a massive flame ball” shoot in the sky on Thursday night. A few minutes later, the airport said that it was closed all the rehearsals, incoming flights were diverted and passengers to Heathrow were sent home. The residents who are also nearby were evacuated.
By Friday morning, the roads around the power station were removed and a helicopter were above. A strange tranquility had come down to Heathrow. The corridors were empty, the check-in offices quietly, the digital flight screens were empty and the crossings were slightly illuminated with emergency lighting. It was a lifeless tranquility that was not even observed during the early panic -stricken weeks of the Koronai pandemic.
Britain’s national network said on Friday afternoon that it had reshaped its network to partially restore power to Heathrow on a temporary basis. The substation held 25,000 liters of oil cooling, which fueled the big fire and becoming very difficult to extinguish, the London Fire Brigade said on Friday. The brigade said that about 5 % of the fire was still burning until Friday night.
The closure of the airport resulted in dozens of flights from the United States landing away from their original destination. They were diverted to the airports in Glasgow, Madrid and even Happy Valley-Goose, a small town in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
John Connor, 22, was sitting at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey on Friday, waiting in vain to return to England after backpacking abroad for two years.
“We sat on the plane for about five hours before they said the flight was called,” he said. “I’m trying to get a plane somewhere near – Paris, Dublin, anywhere else,” he added. “We are told straight no.”
Fresh travelers flock of social media to ask airlines to manage canceled flights and upcoming departures, arguing in positions in X that airline applications are delaying passengers’ notification and that customer service could not be canceled.
Some travelers who had stuck in Europe were invited to consider traveling with rail energy. After finding that his flight from Heathrow was canceled, Phillip Kizun, 58, of Chester County, Pa, would have to improvise as he tried to take from London to Dublin for a work trip. It took a train to Wales and then a ship from the coastal town of Holyhead in the Irish capital. He met with several European and American travelers who did the same.
“It was an absolute real” planes, trains and cars, “Mr Kizun said, a few minutes after his arrival in Dublin, referring to the 1987 Steve Martin-John Candy comedy.
Some planes already in the air had to turn around. Jeannie Lachance, who was traveling to London from Los Angeles with her sister and her 2 -year -old niece, said that about four hours after the flight, the pilot announced that they should return.
“Everyone was quite calm, which I think was nice because we are all trapped on a plane,” said Ms Lachance, 31 years old.
Some airlines have said they will issue exemptions that allow free review, such as British Airways, Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines. A Delta spokesman said the airline would compensate the cost of traveling to London by train for passengers diverted to Amsterdam.
Cirium, an air data company, estimates that 290,000 passengers could be affected by the closure of Heathrow.
Until Friday, several flights had landed or departed from Heathrow, as the airport began to hit back to life, about 16 hours after the fire. The first to touch there was a British Airways plane who had traveled from Gatwick Airport to London after being diverted from its original destination, Singapore, according to the Flight Flight Service.
A Heathrow spokesman said the airport was working to first recover “repatriation flights and aircraft relocation”.
The British Ministry of Transport said it is temporarily lifting restrictions on overnight flights to facilitate congestion.
But British Airways CEO Sean Doyle warned that the closure of Heathrow would have a “huge impact” on airline customers in the coming days. British Airways was set to operate over 670 flights carrying about 107,000 customers on Friday and similar numbers were designed on the weekend, he added.
“We have colleagues and crew and cabin planes located in locations where we do not plan to be,” he said.
Heathrow’s crisis was likely to upset not only people’s movement but also the flow of goods. The closure of the critical aviation hub, even for a short time, would cause delays and paintings of logistical support for many businesses carrying products through Heathrow, said supply chain experts.
Heathrow has two corridors and four terminals serving more than 230 destinations in 90 countries. Last year, about 83.9 million passengers and 1.7 million tonnes of cargo crossed the airport. It is the third largest node for air load in Western Europe, measured in metric tones sent. The goods worth about 200 billion pounds ($ 258 billion) had Heathrow in 2023, about one fifth of the value of the British goods trade.
“The goods are moving around the world in a truly accurate, timed way on a daily basis,” said Ben Farrell, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, a global network of supply chain network. “Any disorders in any part of it lead to an effect elsewhere.”
British businesses will probably be more affected. World trade can be addressed by other major airports in Europe, said Eytan Buchman, head of Freightos, a digital shipping market.
Mr Woldbye, Heathrow’s chief executive, apologized to travelers for the closure and said the airport had done well to repeat flights by Friday night, given the interruption scale.
The closure of the airport came 15 years after one of Europe’s most serious air travel disorders, when a volcano eruption in Iceland sent ash miles to heaven and prevented travel for millions, including Heathrow.
The ash was based on more than 100,000 flights in almost a week in April 2010, as it is dragged by northern Europe. The losses of the airline industry from the volcanic disorder were estimated at $ 1.7 billion.
The report was contributed by Christine Chun; Michael Levenson; Michael D. Shear; Peter Eavis; Christopher Mag; Ivan; Stephen Castle; Niraj chokshi; Ceylan yeğinsu; Claire; John yoon and Qasim nauman
