On Friday afternoon, Heathrow Airport in London began to resume flight operations after being closed for approximately 18 hours. The previous night, a fire at a substation near the airport caused a serious power outage, forcing the busiest airport in Europe to temporarily shut down. Many flights were canceled or diverted, leaving around 200,000 passengers stranded at the airport.
After power was restored, Heathrow Airport lifted the closure order and a British Airways plane landed before sunset on Friday, with other flights gradually arriving afterwards.
By 9 p.m. on that day (21:00 Greenwich Mean Time), another British Airways flight took off from Heathrow Airport bound for Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. The airline announced that it would operate eight long-haul flights on Friday evening. The airport planned to resume normal flight operations on Saturday.
The fire broke out at a substation about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the airport before midnight on Thursday, and it took firefighters about 7 hours to control the blaze. Authorities stated that no suspicious evidence was found, and the London Fire Brigade said they would focus their investigation on the substation’s distribution equipment.
The fire caused power outages for thousands of households in and around Heathrow Airport. According to data from the flight tracking platform Flightradar24, at least 1350 flights were affected, and the impact is expected to last for several days as passengers have to rearrange their travel plans and airlines have to reschedule aircraft and crew members.
Residents in west London described hearing a loud explosion when the fire broke out, followed by seeing fireballs and thick smoke.
When Heathrow Airport announced its closure, approximately 120 flights were in the air. Tracking services showed that some flights turned back, while others were redirected to Gatwick Airport on the outskirts of London, Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris, or Shannon Airport in Ireland.
Heathrow Airport is one of the busiest airports in the world, with passenger traffic reaching 83.9 million last year.
Initially, Heathrow Airport stated that it expected to reopen by midnight on Friday, but serious disruptions are anticipated in the coming days as it will take time to rearrange aircraft, cargo handlers, and crew members, as well as to rebook passengers, even after flights resume operations.
(Reference: Associated Press)