LONDON: Flights at Britain’s Heathrow Airport began resuming late on Friday after a fire knocked out its power supply, forcing Europe’s busiest airport to shut for the day. Thousands of passengers were stranded, causing global travel disruption.
Heathrow stated that its teams had worked tirelessly to reopen the world’s fifth-busiest airport after a massive fire engulfed a substation near the airport on Thursday night. Travellers were advised to stay away as all operations came to a halt.
The airport had been scheduled to handle 1,351 flights on Friday, carrying up to 291,000 passengers. However, planes were diverted to other airports in Britain and across Europe, while many long-haul flights returned to their departure points.
Heathrow said there would be a limited number of flights on Friday, primarily to relocate aircraft and bring planes into London.
“Tomorrow morning, we expect to be back in full operation, to 100% operation as a normal day,” said Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye. “I would like to apologise to the many people whose travel has been affected. We are very sorry for all the inconvenience.”
Police said there was no indication of foul play, but counter-terrorism officers were leading the inquiry due to their expertise and the critical nature of the infrastructure.
The closure not only caused frustration among travellers but also sparked anger from airlines, which questioned how such vital infrastructure could fail.
The airline industry now faces potential financial losses amounting to tens of millions of pounds, alongside an impending dispute over who should bear the costs.
“You would think they would have significant back-up power,” one senior executive from a European airline told Reuters.
Heathrow’s Woldbye defended the airport’s response, saying back-up systems had functioned as expected.
“This (power supply) is a bit of a weak point,” he admitted. “But, of course, we cannot guard ourselves 100% against every contingency, and this is one of them.”
When asked about financial liability, he stated that procedures were in place but added, “We don’t have liabilities in place for incidents like this.”
British Transport Minister Heidi Alexander said the situation had been beyond Heathrow’s control.
“They have swiftly implemented their resilience plans and have worked closely with emergency responders and airline operators,” she told reporters.
“There are no suggestions at the moment of foul play, but the investigation remains open-minded.”
Flights diverted
Several airlines, including JetBlue, American Airlines, Air Canada, Air India, Delta Air Lines, Qantas, United Airlines, British Airways (owned by IAG), and Virgin Atlantic, were either diverted or forced to return to their original airports, according to data from flight analytics firm Cirium.
Shares in multiple airlines, including US carriers, dropped in response to the disruption.
Aviation experts said the last time European airports faced such widespread disruption was during the 2010 Icelandic volcanic ash cloud crisis, which grounded approximately 100,000 flights.
While flights are restarting, it will take time before operations return to normal.
“We have flight and cabin crew, as well as aircraft, currently located where they were not meant to be,” said Sean Doyle, chief executive of British Airways, which had 341 scheduled flights into Heathrow on Friday.
“Unfortunately, this will have a significant impact on all our customers over the coming days.”
The fire brigade stated that the cause of the fire was still unknown but confirmed that 25,000 litres of cooling oil in the substation’s transformer had caught fire. By morning, the transformer was seen smouldering, covered in white firefighting foam.
Stranded passengers in London scrambled to make alternative travel arrangements as they faced prolonged delays.
“It’s incredibly stressful,” said Robyn Autry, 39, a professor who was supposed to fly home to New York. “I’m worried about how much it’s going to cost me to fix this.”
Hotel prices around Heathrow surged, with some booking sites offering rooms for £500—roughly five times the usual rate.
A wake-up call
Airline executives, electrical engineers, and passengers have questioned how Britain’s main gateway to the world could be brought to a standstill by a single fire.
Heathrow, along with London’s other major airports, has experienced previous outages in recent years, most recently due to an automated gate failure and an air traffic system meltdown in 2023.
Philip Ingram, a former British military intelligence officer, said the incident exposed weaknesses in the UK’s critical infrastructure.
“It is a wake-up call,” he told Reuters. “There is no way Heathrow should be completely shut down because of a failure at one power substation.”
Willie Walsh, head of the global airline body IATA and former chief of British Airways, criticised Heathrow for once again letting passengers down.
Heathrow stated that it had diesel generators and uninterruptible power supplies in place to land aircraft and evacuate passengers safely. Those systems operated as expected. However, as the airport consumes as much energy as a small city, it said it could not sustain full operations solely on back-up systems.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said there were serious questions to be answered about how the incident occurred and confirmed that a thorough investigation would take place.
