The busiest flight hub in Europe was forced to shut down all day Friday due to a large fire near London’s Heathrow Airport, causing hundreds of thousands of passengers to experience disruptions in their global travel.
According to FlightRadar 24, at least 1,350 flights to and from Heathrow were affected, and the impact was expected to last for several days as passengers attempted to reschedule their travel and airlines attempted to get planes and crew to the correct locations.
Although authorities are unsure of the source of the fire, they have not yet discovered any suspicious activity.
West London residents reported hearing a loud explosion, followed by a fireball and smoke clouds, as the fire tore through the electrical substation close to the airport.
As the closure was announced, about 120 flights were in the air; some were diverted to Gatwick Airport outside of London, Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris, or Shannon Airport in Ireland, according to tracking services.
Virgin Atlantic informed Lawrence Hayes that they would be diverted to Glasgow while they were three-quarters of the way from New York to London.
As he was stepping off the plane in Scotland, Hayes told the BBC,
“I don’t even know how long I’ve been up for because it was a red-eye flight and I’d already had a full day. Luckily, I got hold of my wife, and she’s kindly booked me a train ticket to get back to Euston, but it will be an incredibly long day.”
Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world for international travel. Earlier this year experienced its busiest January on record, with over 6.3 million passengers, up more than 5% from the same period the previous year.
The 2010 eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano, which sent clouds of ash into the atmosphere and caused months of turmoil for transatlantic air travel, was a bigger interruption than Friday’s, though.
Fire is under control, but the effect will last for days.
There is “no suggestion” of foul play, according to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, but it was too early to say what caused the massive fire that broke out roughly two miles (3 kilometers) from the airport.
With assistance from the Metropolitan Police, the London Fire Brigade was spearheading the inquiry, according to officials.
The cause was unknown, so counterterrorism detectives were also involved in the investigation.
According to Miliband, a backup power source to the airport was also cut off by the fire, which took seven hours to contain.
According to a statement from Heathrow, the airport was forced to close for the day.
“There will be a lot of disruption over the next few days, so passengers should avoid going to the airport until it reopens,” the airport stated.
When a malfunction in Britain’s air traffic control system halted takeoffs and landings throughout the United Kingdom on one of the busiest travel days in 2023, Heathrow was at the center of a shorter interruption.
The closure’s effects will be felt over the course of two to four days as crews, airlines, and cargo carriers are repositioned and passengers are rescheduled, according to aviation consultant Anita Mendiratta.
“It’s not just about starting flights tomorrow when the airport opens up at midnight tonight; it’s also about the backlog and the consequences that have occurred,” Mendiratta stated.
“Crew and aircraft—many are not where they’re supposed to be right now. So the recalculation of this is going to be intense.”
Diverted, canceled, and in limbo
At Heathrow, a family of five traveling to Dallas showed up in the hopes their flight home—still listed as delayed—would take off.
But when Andrea Sri brought her brother, sister-in-law, and their three children to the airport, they were told by police that there would be no flight.
It was time-consuming. It’s very confusing,” Sri, a London resident, said.
“We attempted to contact British Airways, but they don’t answer their phones until 8 a.m.”
Those who were rerouted to other cities attempted to arrange for further travel to London.
After sending flights from Singapore and Perth, Australia, to Paris, Qantas Airlines announced that it would bus passengers to London, probably involving a train shuttle under the English Channel.
To transport stranded passengers on Friday and Saturday, Ryanair, a low-cost airline that does not operate out of Heathrow, announced that it had added eight “rescue flights” between Dublin and Stansted, another London airport.
All trains to and from the airport were canceled by National Rail.
Flights normally begin landing and taking off at Heathrow at 6 a.m. due to nighttime flying restrictions. But the skies were silent Friday morning.
“Living near Heathrow is noisy; there are planes every 90 seconds or so, plus the constant hum of traffic, but you get used to it, to the point of no longer noticing,” said James Henderson, who has lived next to the airport for more than 20 years.
“Today is different; you can hear the birds singing.”
Homes were darkened by blazes that illuminated the sky.
When Matthew Muirhead and a coworker went outside on a Thursday night while working near Heathrow, they saw smoke rising from an electrical substation and heard sirens blaring.
He claimed, “All the lights in town went out, and we saw a bright flash of white.”
The London Fire Brigade dispatched 10 engines and roughly 70 firemen to suppress the blaze, and about 150 residents were evacuated from their homes near the power facility.
Assistant Commissioner Pat Goulbourne said, “This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as quickly as possible.”
In a post on X, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks stated that over 16,300 homes were impacted by the power outage.
Laptops 1000The U.K. government earlier this year authorized the construction of a third runway in an effort to improve the airport’s economics and global connectivity.
