Heathrow Airport aims to resume limited operations on Friday and fully reopen by Saturday following a major power disruption caused by a fire at a nearby electricity substation. The blaze, which broke out early Friday, led to the cancellation of over 1,300 flights at the UK’s primary airport, a key global travel hub, plunging passengers into chaos.
“Heathrow uses as much energy as a small city, therefore getting back to a full and safe operation takes time,” the airport stated on Friday afternoon. The shutdown began early Friday, with officials warning of significant disruptions expected to persist for days due to the power loss. A Heathrow executive noted that while backup power systems exist for critical operations, they don’t all activate instantly.
British Airways announced plans to run a handful of long-haul flights from 7 pm Friday, despite the ongoing limitations. The London Fire Brigade contained the substation fire by 6:28 am, though 10 percent of the 25,000 litres of cooling oil continued burning into midday.
The fire’s origin remains unclear. UK counterterror police are investigating, but Energy Secretary Ed Miliband stated Friday morning there’s “no suggestion” of deliberate sabotage. Willie Walsh, director of the International Air Transport Association, criticized the incident as a “clear planning failure,” pointing to the reliance on a single power source for such vital infrastructure.
Power is being supplied to Heathrow from two other substations. The airport said it was “implementing a process” to redirect power to parts of the airport cut off, but cautioned this could take time.
The chaos at Heathrow will be prolonged for days since airlines will have to deal with a backlog of as much as 200,000 passengers stranded due to the shutdown of the UK’s busiest airport.
Even when the airport reopens, airlines will experience a logistical disaster, with crews and planes which should have been in London distributed at airfields around the world to which they have been redirected.
Heathrow handles a daily average of 200,000 passengers, and Friday is typically the busiest day of the week. One consolation is that Heathrow is shut during the middle of the night, which is to say that relatively few flights all of them long-haul were in the air when the incident occurred. A mid-day closure would have been even more disastrious.
