Flights resumed landing at London’s Heathrow Airport late Friday after a fire at a power station grounded planes at Europe’s busiest air hub, causing travel chaos for thousands of people worldwide.
The electricity substation fire shut down the airport for the majority of the day, cancelling or diverting hundreds of flights and raising concerns about the infrastructure’s vulnerability.
An AFP journalist saw planes landing on the runway at Heathrow late on Friday, while British Airways said it had gained permission to depart eight long-haul flights from 1900 GMT to Johannesburg, Singapore, and Riyadh.
Earlier, an airport spokeswoman stated that “some flights” could take off, with the first being “repatriation flights and relocating aircraft”.
Overnight flight restrictions have also been temporarily relaxed to relieve congestion, according to the UK’s transport department.
Heathrow Airport CEO Thomas Woldbye stated that “tomorrow, we expect to be back in full operation”.
He apologised and stated that the decision to close the airport was made after a backup transformer failed, requiring the power supply to be reconstructed.
“We have lost power equal to that of a midsized city,” he said, calling it an “incident of major severity”.
Heathrow serves roughly 80 nations, and approximately 1,350 planes were scheduled to land or take off from the airport’s five terminals on Friday, according to the Flightradar24 tracking website.
Heathrow is one of the world’s busiest airports, with around 230,000 passengers per day (83 million per year).
Late on Friday, the London Fire Brigade stated that the fire was “believed to be non-suspicious” and that an investigation would “focus on the electrical distribution equipment”.
It occurred after London’s Metropolitan Police stated the Counter Terrorism Command was leading the probe into the fire due to its severity.
“While there is currently no indication of foul play, we are keeping an open mind at this time,” a spokeswoman stated previously.
Firefighters responded to the blaze shortly after 2320 GMT on Thursday and had it under control by 0800 GMT on Friday.
The outage cut power to 100,000 homes overnight. National Grid, the electricity distribution network, claimed that at about 1400 GMT, power was partially restored to Heathrow and the affected area homes.
“We need to understand what caused an incident of this magnitude at an electricity substation that is very close to a critical piece of national infrastructure,” said Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.
Many dissatisfied travellers were forced to make alternative arrangements as a result of the airport shutdown.
Flightradar24 reported that approximately 120 Heathrow-bound flights were in the air when the closure was announced.
Gatwick, the UK’s second-busiest airport, took some Heathrow aircraft, while others were redirected to European airports such as Shannon in southwest Ireland, Frankfurt, Germany, and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
According to London Fire Brigade deputy commissioner Jonathan Smith, firefighters worked “tirelessly in challenging and very hazardous conditions”.
He told reporters that the fire had started in a “transformer containing 25,000 litres of cooling oil fully alight.”
