London: One of the world’s busiest airports has been forced to close for the day after a nearby fire cut power, disrupting hundreds of thousands of passengers as airlines, including Qantas, cancelled flights or diverted them to other airports.
London’s Heathrow Airport, which is used by about 200,000 passengers a day, said it had no choice but to close after the fire broke out at an electricity substation in the city’s west on Thursday night (Friday AEDT). It expected significant disruption for days. About 1300 flights take off or land at Heathrow every day and it is Europe’s busiest airport.
The London Fire Brigade said around 70 firefighters were tackling the blaze in the west of London.Credit: Twitter
“Passengers should not travel to the airport under any circumstances until the airport reopens,” Heathrow said in a statement.
The impact was immediate. Some 120 flights were in the air when the closure was announced, with some turned around and others diverted to Gatwick Airport outside London, Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris or Ireland’s Shannon Airport.
Qantas Airways rerouted London-bound flights from Perth and Singapore to Paris, with buses arranged to take customers on to London. Qantas flight QF10 from London to Perth on Friday was cancelled, with passengers moved to other flights, and QF2 to Sydney was also likely to be affected, a spokesperson said.
Qantas said customers would be contacted directly if their flight was impacted. “Our teams are working hard to support impacted customers and we thank them for their patience.”
Flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said in a post online that at least 1351 flights to and from Heathrow would be affected on Friday, not including flights that might be cancelled or delayed due to aircraft being out of position.
“Heathrow is one of the major hubs of the world,” FlightRadar24’s Ian Petchenik said. “This is going to disrupt airlines’ operations around the world.”
British Energy Minister Ed Miliband said the “catastrophic” fire had prevented the power back-up system from working and engineers were working to deploy a third back-up mechanism. He said it was too soon to say what had caused the blaze, which had been brought under control by Friday evening AEDT.
“There was a back-up generator, but that was also affected by the fire, which gives a sense of how unusual and unprecedented it was,” he told Sky News. “With any incident like this, we will want to understand why it happened and what if any lessons it has for our infrastructure.”
Firefighters extinguish the fire at the North Hyde electrical substation.Credit: AP
Chaotic days ahead
Heathrow is the fifth-busiest airport in the world, and one of the busiest two-runway airports, with about 1300 combined take-offs and landings a day, according to its website. It had its busiest January on record this year, with more than 6.3 million passengers passing through.
It normally opens for flights at 6am due to night-time flying restrictions. It said the closure would last until 11.59pm on Friday, local time.
Travel experts said the disruption would extend far beyond Heathrow.
Passengers with suitcases wait on a nearby road after Heathrow Airport closed. Credit: AP
Airlines’ carefully choreographed networks depend on planes and crews being in specific locations at specific times. Dozens of air carriers will have to reconfigure their networks to move planes and crews around.
“The other question is, ‘What will airlines do to deal with the backlog of passengers?’,” travel industry analyst Henry Harteveldt, with Atmosphere Research Group, said. “It’s going to be a chaotic couple of days.”
The London Fire Brigade said 10 fire engines and about 70 firefighters tackled the substation blaze, which cut power to thousands of homes along with Heathrow.
Social media posts earlier showed orange flames and large plumes of smoke coming from the facility. About 150 people had to be evacuated.
Reuters, AP
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.