Flights Resume at Heathrow Airport After Major Power Outage/ Newslooks/ WASHINGTON/ J. Mansour/ Morning Edition/ Flights have resumed at London’s Heathrow Airport after a substation fire forced a nearly 18-hour shutdown, stranding around 200,000 passengers and canceling over 1,300 flights. While airport operations are now “fully functional,” airlines warn that disruptions will persist for days. Officials face scrutiny over infrastructure vulnerabilities and contingency preparedness.
Heathrow Airport Reopens: Quick Looks
- Heathrow Airport is fully operational after a daylong shutdown
- Power outage caused by a fire at an offsite electrical substation
- Over 1,300 flights were canceled and 200,000 passengers stranded Friday
- British Airways expects to operate 85% of flights Saturday
- Airport CEO says backup systems worked as designed, but not at full scale
- Government pledges full investigation into the infrastructure failure
- Some passengers were diverted mid-air to alternate airports or countries
- Disruption among worst since 2010 volcanic ash cloud shutdown
Flights Resume at Heathrow Airport After Major Power Outage
Deep Look
Heathrow Resumes Flights After Substation Fire, But Airlines Warn of Days of Disruptions
London’s Heathrow Airport declared itself “fully operational” Saturday following a disruptive electrical fire that shut down one of the world’s busiest air hubs for nearly 18 hours. While limited flights resumed Friday evening, major airlines caution that the ripple effects of the shutdown will take days to resolve.
The chaos began late Thursday when a fire at a power substation about two miles from Heathrow knocked out electricity to the airport and more than 60,000 nearby properties. The blaze, which caused an explosion and visible fireball, burned for seven hours before being brought under control, but not before paralyzing operations and stranding roughly 200,000 travelers worldwide.
By Friday morning, all but a handful of flights had been grounded. British Airways, Heathrow’s largest airline, canceled the majority of its scheduled 600 flights. On Saturday, it said about 85% of its services would resume but warned the recovery would be “extremely complex.”
“Recovering an operation of our size after such a significant incident is no small task,” the airline said in a statement.
Heathrow Airport said it had deployed hundreds of additional staff to assist travelers and added capacity for 10,000 extra passengers on Saturday. Passengers were urged to check with airlines before heading to the airport as delays and rescheduling efforts continued.
The incident has raised questions about the resilience of Britain’s infrastructure. Although police said the fire was not suspicious, critics questioned how a single point of failure could shut down such a vital international gateway.
The London Fire Brigade confirmed it would focus its investigation on the electrical equipment at the substation. In the meantime, political pressure is mounting. The British government acknowledged the severity of the disruption and promised a thorough review.
“This scale of disruption must not happen again,” a government spokesperson said. “A full investigation will help ensure stronger contingency planning going forward.”
Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye defended the airport’s response. Speaking to the BBC, he said, “The situation was not created at Heathrow Airport. The airport didn’t shut for days—we shut for hours.”
He said the airport’s backup power systems worked as intended but were not designed to power the entire complex, which consumes as much electricity as a small city.
“That’s how most airports operate,” Woldbye said, adding that similar failures would cause comparable disruptions at other international airports.
Heathrow, which handled 83.9 million passengers last year, is a key global transit hub. Friday’s shutdown drew comparisons to the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull volcanic eruption in Iceland, which grounded European flights for nearly a week.
For passengers caught in transit, the shutdown created sudden and costly chaos. About 120 flights were already in the air when the closure was announced. Some planes were forced to land in other U.K. cities or diverted to different countries.
Mark Doherty and his wife were flying from New York’s JFK Airport to Heathrow when they realized something was wrong.
“We were halfway over the Atlantic when I noticed the flight tracker turning back,” he said.
The pilot soon confirmed the flight was returning to New York. Doherty was frustrated by what he described as a lack of contingency planning:
“Typical England—no backup plan for something like this.”
With aircraft and crews scattered, airlines now face the logistical challenge of repositioning assets while minimizing further disruption. Industry experts say it could take several days before operations fully stabilize.
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