LONDON: Some flights began to land at London’s Heathrow Airport late on Friday (Mar 21) after a fire at a power station grounded planes at Europe’s busiest air hub, causing travel chaos for thousands of people around the world.
The electricity substation fire shut down the airport for most of the day, leading to the cancellation or diversion of hundreds of flights and raising questions about the infrastructure’s vulnerability.
British Airways said it had received clearance to depart eight long-haul flights from 7pm GMT to cities including Johannesburg, Singapore and Riyadh.
Singapore Airlines is resuming full London service, with its first flight to Heathrow since the disruption departing Changi Airport at 9am local time (1am GMT).
According to the UK’s transport department, restrictions on overnight flights have also been temporarily lifted to help ease congestion.
The airport had been due to handle 1351 flights on Friday, flying up to 291,000 passengers, but planes were diverted to other airports in Britain and across Europe, while many long-haul flights returned to their point of departure.
Heathrow said there would be a limited number of flights on Friday, mostly focused on relocating aircraft and bringing planes into London.
“Tomorrow morning, we expect to be back in full operation, to 100 per cent operation as a normal day,” said Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye.
“What I’d like to do is to apologise to the many people who have had their travel affected … we are very sorry about all the inconvenience.”
Police said that after an initial assessment, they were not treating the incident as suspicious, although enquiries remained ongoing. London Fire Brigade said its investigations would focus on the electrical distribution equipment.
The closure not only caused misery for travellers but provoked anger from airlines, which questioned how such crucial infrastructure could fail.
The industry is now facing the prospect of a financial hit costing tens of millions of pounds, and a likely fight over who should pay.
