Air travel is facing a day of chaos as Heathrow struggles to recover from a fire that closes Europe’s busiest airport, leading to 1,300 flight cancellations and raises questions about UK infrastructure resilience.
The airport was fully reopened for flights on Saturday morning, with the first flight beginning just after 6am.
But disruption is still expected as carriers resume operations with planes, crews and passengers, launching logistical challenges that are scattered around the world.
British Airways, Heathrow’s largest airline, said it is expected to cancel around 15% of flights at the airport on Saturday.
Flames at local current substations caused a blackout that closed the airport early on Friday morning, forcing them to detour to other hubs such as Paris or Amsterdam or return to the original airport.
Some transatlantic flights have ended up in areas where space is available, such as Air Canada flights decoupled from Toronto to Goose Bay in Newfoundland.
At that height, 70 firefighters were working on an Inferno, which began shortly before midnight on Thursday, lit 25,000 liters of cooling oil.
“This is an unprecedented situation and we haven’t seen Heathrow closures of this scale in many years,” said Sean Doyle, BA CEO.
London’s metropolitan police said its counterterrorism headquarters is a major inquiry given the “location of the substation and the impact that the incident had on important national infrastructure.”
On Friday evening, the Met added that they had not currently treated the incident as suspicious while the liability remained in the hands of counter-terrorism police.
“The investigation into the cause of the fire remains in the early stages,” the force said. “After the initial assessment, we have not treated the incident as suspicious, but inquiries remain ongoing.”
The closure following the failure of one local substation raised questions about Heathrow’s resilience and whether other parts of the UK’s domestic infrastructure are equally vulnerable.
Willie Walsh, former BA boss and current head of the International Air Transport Association, criticized him for saying it was a “clear plan failure” that relied on a single power source and left a critical infrastructure behind.
Transport Select Committee Chairman Ruth Cadbury MP told the BBC “issued questions about infrastructure resilience.”
Heathrow executives rejected these claims. They said the airport pulled power from three substations and a backup generator. The backup generator provides enough emergency power to keep the runway open, but not enough to run the full airport operation for long periods of time.
Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye said the airport was suffering from a “major severity incident.” He added: “This is unprecedented. It’s never happened before. We won’t close the airport unless there are serious safety concerns.”
Only one of the three powered substations failed, but Heathrow was forced to close thousands of electrical systems. “Reboot all these systems in a safe way… It’s going to take a long time,” Woldbye said. “We can’t protect ourselves 100% [against every contingency]He said.
The BA, which operates more than half of the flights from Heathrow, is far the worst airline and has instructed passengers to prepare for long-term disruptions.
“This incident will have a major impact on the airline and customers over the next few days due to the disruptions of the journey over the next few days,” Doyle said.
The airline had planned to operate more than 670 flights on Friday alone, carrying around 107,000 customers, but similar numbers were planned over the weekend. Over 200,000 passengers use Heathrow every day.
With the complete closure, passengers found a way to travel quickly. Some airlines, including international train services for Ryanair, EasyJet and EuroStar, have secured additional seats in the service, while British railway operators have reported spikes in train bookings.
Some turned to private jets. Toby Edwards, co-CEO of Victor, Private Jet Charter Company, said demand for flights “surged” including one passenger who paid $75,000 to fly through the Atlantic.
Demand surged for hotels in rooms near Heathrow, which accused them of increasing the price of more than four times to more than £700 a night.
European Airlines shares closed on Friday after Heathrow closure. This saw a drop of nearly 3% in the International Air Group, the parent of British Airways.
Additional reports by Lucy Fisher, Kieran Smith, Akira Kinio and Jamie John
