The British airport management announced today shortly after 18:00 Greece the resumption of “some flights” this evening, stressing that the airport will return to full operation tomorrow Saturday.
After a huge fire in a nearby substation of the electricity grid, which resulted in a power outage on its premises, causing problems with flight programs around the world.
British Airways CEO Sean Doyle told reporters that the situation at the airport is something “unprecedented”, saying he had not seen an airport interruption on such a scale for many years.
The Chronicle of Chaos
London’s Heathrow Airport closed today for the whole day, after a huge fire in a nearby substation of the power grid, which resulted in a power outage on its premises, causing problems with flight programs around the world.
Huge flames and tobacco appeared in the sky overnight before the Fire Service announced that it had controlled the fire at the substation of Haze’s electricity network, a western suburb of the British capital.
Around 70 firefighters were fighting to extinguish the fire at a western suburb of London, which also shut down the region’s reserve power system, causing a massive power outage in Heathrow, Europe’s most busy airport in the world.
The power outage reported shortly after 23:00 local time yesterday, Thursday, (01:00 Greek time today), to Britain and Europe, while many long -distance flights have simply returned to the airport from which they had left.
Early this morning, the roads around its largest airport were mostly deserted, with the exception of some passengers leaving on foot from the airport with their luggage.
“Our fire researchers will begin their research and continue to work closely with our partners to minimize problems and support the community,” the London Fire Service said in a post on social media.
The causes of the fire are not yet known, he added, while Energy Minister Ed Milibad noted that he did not appear to be due to a criminal act.
Why didn’t it work the reserve electricity system
Milibad noted that the “catastrophic” fire prevented a reserve electricity system and that engineers are working to put a third reserve mechanism into operation.
“For every incident like this we want to understand why it happened and, if there are some lessons, to draw them on our infrastructure,” he told Sky News.
The anti -terrorist in investigations on fire in Heathrow
“Given the impact of the fire on critical national infrastructure”, the Anti -Terrorism Service undertook to lead investigations, as announced almost 12 hours since chaos dominated Heathrow International Airport.
The decision is not due to signs of sabotage but to the fact that the Anti -Terrorism Service “has special resources and opportunities to accelerate the investigation to minimize disruption and to identify the cause,” according to an official announcement.
In the air over 1,300 flights
Heathrow’s management announced that the airport, which was planned to manage 1,351 flights during today, with up to 291,000 passengers, would remain closed until midnight as it was facing a significant power outage.
“Passengers are advised not to go to the airport and contact their airline for further information,” the airport management added in a statement. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
The power outage in Heathrow caused by the fire, which reported shortly after 23:00 local time yesterday, Thursday (01:00 Greek time today), forced airlines to divert their flights to other airports to Britain and Europe, while many major flights were departed.
‘Dived’ the airline shares
Industry experts warned that passengers whose flights had to land at other airports in Europe may need to stay in waiting for non -direct passengers if they do not have the visa visa (visa) required to leave the airport. World flight programs will also be affected, as many planes will be away.
“Heathrow is one of the largest nodes in the world,” said Ian Petsenik, a spokesman for the Flightradar24 flight watch.
“This will disturb the operation of airlines around the world,” he noted.
British Airways, the British Airlines, the largest carrier of Heathrow, had 341 flights planned to land there today.
Chaos hit airline shares, including British Airways’ motherboard.
According to Flightradar24, at least 120 incoming flights had to be diverted to other airports early this morning.
Qantas Airways raised its flight from Perth to Paris, a flight from United Airlines New York headed to Shannon, Ireland, and United Airlines flight from San Francisco was to land in Washington (Columbia region).
Some US flights turned around while they were around their mid -route to return to the point they departed.
Travel experts have pointed out that the disruption is expected to extend far beyond Heathrow.
Carefully choreographed airline networks depend on airplanes and crews located in specific places at specific times. Dozens of carriers will be forced to quickly remodel their networks to move planes and crews.
How will the airplane delay passengers will deal with
“The other issue that arises is, ‘What will airlines do to deal with the delay of passengers?’ “For a couple of days it will be chaotic,” he noted.
Some passengers turned to social media. Entrian Speeder, who works in the British Tesco chain, said in a post on X that he was on an Airbus A380 heading for Heathrow. “#Heathrow no idea where we are going. Currently above Austria, “he wrote.
Heathrow and other large London airports have been hit in recent years by power outages, with the most recent an automatic gateway damage and a collapse of the air traffic system, both in 2023.
A spokesman for Heathrow told Reuters that it has not been clarified when electricity will be restored at the airport, and that they are awaiting significant operations in the coming days.
In addition to London, some homes and businesses had no electricity. “Firefighters led 29 people to safe places from neighboring properties and, for precautionary reasons, was excluded from a 200 -meter -ray area, and about 150 people were also removed,” the fire brigade said.
It will take days to bring back flights to normal flow
Of course, the problem is expected to create chaos in airlines and in the coming days. Experts estimate that it will have to spend several days in order to be able to return to a normal flow in Heathrow.
“It could take several days for airlines to make new reservations for passengers, as the closure can affect up to 290,000 people who had planned to fly from or towards Heathrow”said Mike Arnot, a spokesman for Cirium Air Analysis.
